


And such beginnings touch their end

by Cactusepique



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gap Filler, Now AU because of The husbands of River Song, lots of feelings, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cactusepique/pseuds/Cactusepique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was running out of regeneration energy, and she was going to age. He couldn't get old with her, could he ?</p><p>Theoretically, nothing could keep people away from him. Neither the distance, nor time or death. Deaths and losses didn't make any sense when you were a time traveller. </p><p>A big thanks to Inkfire for correcting this. =D</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To grow old with you

**Author's Note:**

> First work in English for me. This story is bound to be quite short, only a few chapters and I'll do my best to update next week. For the moment, let me know if you enjoyed it. ;-)
> 
> The title is from a poem from George Herbert. Can't remember which one. If anybody recognize it, let me know. 
> 
> Thank you for reading !

One day she caught a cold-a very human one-like Time Lords never get them.

He tucked her in bed despite her protests and brought her warm tea boosted with honey. She denied being in pain but he'd seen the tension on her features and put painkillers in her tea. He curled next to her and was watching her sleep when a crazy and terrifying idea occurred to him. He gently placed his hands over her face and tried to give her some regeneration energy. The bright light faded into her skin slowly and he felt her relaxing into his touch. His head came to rest on her chest as he listened to her steady heartbeats, and he wrapped his arms securely around her as he fell into a deep slumber.

She felt a lot better in the morning and woke him up by peppering little kisses on his neck.

“Hello Sweetie,” came the usual greeting as he blinked and slowly adjusted to the morning light. 

“You shouldn't have done that,” she sighed as she smoothed her hand through his hair.

“Done what?” he asked in a voice thick with sleep as he rolled her over to be on top of her and started tracing a path of kisses from her neck down to her chest.

“Heal me. You can't carry on like that, it won't get better anyway.”

He looked up at her with a very confused expression and she frowned. 

“Spoilers I suppose. Being ill does really get me off-guard, should be more careful,” she muttered to herself. 

She shushed him as he started to formulate a question. “I'm running out of regeneration energy, my love. Don't look so terrified,” she added with a sad smile. “There's nothing you can do, it's just how it is.”

“But...”

“I'm human, Doctor. Time Lord energy has kept me in good shape, young, strong and healthy for centuries by now. I'm not going to die right now, I'm just going to age, faster than a Time Lord but still slower than a normal human.”

She kissed him then to keep him quiet and he melted into the kiss, dragging her even closer to him if possible.

“I just have to be careful, because I won't heal as easy as I was used to,” she eventually spoke when they broke apart. “But everything's gonna be alright, I promise you.”

 

He healed her broken wrist in New York several decades later, when fine lines had already marked her face, signs of that age she wore so well. She was mad at him and slapped him but afterwards, after Rory and Amy were gone, he pulled her into a tight hug and chastised her gently.

“You're not a waste River. My so brave, so, so beautiful wife. I don't understand how you could, even for one second, think that,” he mumbled into her hair. 

“Never let him see the damage, eh, River?” he said, stepping away to stare at her, still holding her hand. “Never let me see that I've hurt you?” 

He cupped her face then, stroking her cheeks. “I don't mind you're aging, but I mind you being hurt, especially when it's my fault.”

She nodded quickly, said “I've got a book to write,” and flew from him up the stairs.

He didn't run after her, but found her later in the library. He brought her a cup of coffee that he set next to her on the desk, and started massaging her shoulders. She sighed and leaned into him.

“Does it bother you, River? Me looking so childish, people staring at us when we go dancing? Because I could age if you want me to. I would anyway in the end. So why don't we start getting old together now?”

She caught his hands on her shoulders and squeezed them gently. “Don't be silly love, I'll decay and die in the end. You'll regenerate and carry on, as you have always done.” She stood up and gave him a weak smile. “I'm almost an old woman Doctor, you had better go and find a younger version of me to shag and run with.”

“River!” He looked scandalized but she only let out a sharp and unamused laugh and he wanted to slap her. Instead he saw the film of tears in her eyes and gathered her almost shaky frame in his arms. He'd always been stronger than he looked and she quickly gave up on trying to get free and remained tense in his embrace as he ran his hands on her back.

“It has never been all about running and shagging, River. Well, maybe a little bit,” he added as she repressed a chuckle that sounded like a sob. “It was about love,” he spoke so softly that she almost didn't hear him. “That's why I've married you. Not to fix time. I could have done that without getting involved with such a terrifying, complicated and wonderful woman as you.”

He tangled his hands in her hair and started to remove her pins.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your hair down. Then, we'll have a bath and then bedtime stories. Did I ever tell you about my human duplicate?”

She shook her head, still not looking at him.

“I'd better tell you then, so you'll know.”

“Know what?” she asked, knowing he wanted to make a effect.

“That I'm not only the eleventh Doctor. I'm the last one. Regarding regenation energy, I'm almost as out as you are.”

 

They kept running and chasing each other across time and space. One day he turned up on her doorstep, thinking she would have just finished one of her lectures. He brought her flowers and chocolate, as stereotyped as it was, and was planning to spend all evening with some piano music, candies and childish movies. He didn't want to run this time, but to be utterly domestic with her.

He began to worry when five minutes after he knocked she didn't come to open the door. He tried to push it and found it open.

“River ?” he called as he stepped inside.

“I'm here sweetie,” came a weak voice from the living room, and his throat tightened and the air seemed suddenly thick around him. She sounded old, more than old, ancient. And she was.

“Hey honey, I'm home,” came the usual but unsure greeting as he approached her and she stood up on unsteady legs. He reached and hugged her lightly to him, as if he were afraid of breaking her.

“I'm not going to break into pieces or fade into dust, you know,” she said with a faltering voice. Her hair was up in a bun, winter-white but still so soft and beautiful under his hands.

“What happened to you, River? Please, tell me I didn't make you wait for centuries. Tell me I was there.” 

He lifted her chin to meet her aged eyes. Their green seemed to have faded a little but they were still gleaming with cleverness and energy. He carefully traced the parchment-like skin of her face and smiled. “You're beautiful.”

“I'm really not,” she replied, but she smiled. “And you were there. Can't tell you much, spoilers and all that, but you were.”

“Was I old?” he asked without thinking, and feared she'd feel offended. “'Cause I'm old and maybe it's time I start looking my age. I'm ready for this you know,” he added urgently.

“No, you weren't. Just a tiny bit timeworn. So yes, let’s say you were.”

He chuckled and settled on the sofa with her. He held her hands and studied them while stroking his thumbs against their backs. She had such beautiful hands, lined skin and fragile fingers still wearing rings and nail polish.

“You're beautiful,” he couldn't help but say it again. She frowned, but his smile was genuine.

“I'm old and time-ravaged. I'm not a fool, sweetie, and there's no point trying to be kind with me.”

“No, but you are,” he replied stubbornly. “I never get to see people getting old,” he confessed softly. “I usually lose them long before that.”

She softened at that and squeezed his hands. “You will with me,” she spoke softly, “But for now I think it's time you should go.”

“Can't I stay? How are you doing on your own here? Do you still teach? And where am I, older me, the me that was with you? Why did I leave you? River?” He stopped his endless stream of questions when she began to cry, and cradled her into his arms, rocking her gently.

“You asked me to leave and I...spoilers,” she sobbed. “I don't even know what I'm going to do with the university...”

That was when he noticed it: the house. It was exactly the same as when heʼd come to see her just two days ago. “I'm not late,” he observed. “Where do you come from, River? When were you?”

She shook her head, not willing to tell him and he easily gave up, knowing there was no point pushing her.

“Alright. Fancy a hot chocolate, Professor Song? It's ok, let me,” he quickly said and picked her up bridal style in his arms. “I'll get you to bed and read to you. We'll fix everything tomorrow, I promise.”

He knew it must kill her to show such vulnerability, but he wanted so much to show her how much he cared for her and still loved her, no matter her age. He failed to find rest that night and sat on a chair next to her bed, watching her sleep. His thoughts flew back centuries ago, to a library only filled with books and carnivorous shadows. If it was the end for her, how could she have looked so young back there? He didn't feel time shifting, which meant that his past and her future weren't rewriting each other. How could she be so old if she had yet to go to the Library? A crazy part of him wanted to believe that she was a post-Library River, that he'd find a way to fix it, grow old with her and that they'd die together in their bed, very old and happy to still be together after all, but he knew it wasn't possible.

She asked him to leave again the next morning. She pretended she'd be fine and that he had worlds to save and younger her to run with. He got mad at her and they almost had a big fight, but River knew better.

“I know you just want to take care of me sweetie, but I'll be fine. Now go find me and make sure I'll have good memories to remember. I just need some time alone, but you can come back this evening. Or later. I'll be waiting for you.”

 

She was young again when he came back on the evening, but her hair didn't look the same as it had in the Library and he sighed in relief. She pulled him in for a kiss that was a little bit clumsy at first, and then needy.

“No questions that I won't answer anyway. Just know that older you is an impossible man and that I love you,” she whispered into his neck before biting gently along his collarbone. “Now, come here.”

 

A few days later she had dyed her hair and his throat tightened at the sight of her. She seemed surprised to see him on her doorstep. “New haircut, new tuxedo, still the hat, all thatʼs missing is the cane,” she said with a smirk as she let him in.

“You're right on time, half an hour later and I'd have been off. I'm going to lead an expedition to the Library. You know, the planet. Ever been there?”

His face must have crumbled because she almost ran to him. “What's wrong my love?”

He quickly regained his composure and put on a smile. “Nothing, wife. I just thought that maybe it's time I showed you the singing towers of Darillium, because I've been promising for ages. You'll have plenty of time to go to that boring library after.” She laughed with excitement at that.

“Just one minute, sweetie. You're dressed up but I'm not, let me change.”

“The green dress I gave you on our first night. Can you please wear it?”

“You nostalgic idiot, 'course I can.”

They stopped on Calderon Beta for chips and well, because he really was a nostalgic idiot, and they came across his younger self. He knew that Amy and Rory were sleeping in the other Doctor's TARDIS, knew that it was the end of the line for him and River, but it kind of reassured him to know that their story was not only ending but also beginning.

He did cry and he didn't tell her why. He made love to her one last time and even helped her pack her things for the expedition.

“A spacesuit. It's necessary but I still hate it, centuries later,” she sighed and he pulled her into a tight hug that left her almost breathless, because he knew she was going to die in that damned spacesuit.


	2. Younger than ever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to those who read and will read this. 
> 
> Reviews/ constructive critiques/ comments are very, very welcomed !

She kept getting younger and younger.

He really tried to get the time right, to meet her in a proper order. It should have been easy as he knew in which year she'd started university, but even the old girl didn't seem to be on his side.  
Perhaps it was just how things were supposed to be and remain.

"Time is not the boss of you," he'd once said.

What a fool he'd been.

 

The same fear that had once haunted River started very soon to plague him. "Your firsts are my lasts," she'd once said. He knew it not to be completely true, but he was now experiencing what had pushed her to say so, that time after 1969.

He kept seeing younger her, younger each time they met and it felt like losing her. Because each time she knew him less.

He didn't lose the hope of meeting older her again, though. Because he knew they weren't strictly back to front. He knew he had been back to kiss River again, again and again after what she thought to be her last kiss.  
Because he had already had her first kiss, back in Berlin.

Still he kind of missed not being the one to say "Spoilers".

It wasn’t that he loved her less than older her. But not being linear hurt. It wasn’t that he loved her more than she did, but in a way it was, because he knew her better. But it didn't matter. He found other ways of loving her.

After all, people loved in ways, not in amount.

He hadn't met her between Berlin and Area 52, but he'd always suspected that it wasn't the same for her. Her love for him was too fierce, too stubborn on that pyramid and she'd claimed it without hesitation. He'd known what this meant. A relationship, carefully and slowly built. Melody may have chosen to be River Song in Berlin, but it had taken all her student years to fully become the woman who married him.

They ran, they fought, they loved. He taught her physics and the laws of time. He taught her to raise walls and doors carefully locked in her mind. He gave her rules, rules that she'd give him one day. He taught her Gallifreyan and traced a thousand of times words of love and comfort into her skin. He held her at night when she had nightmares.  
She still managed to surprise him. She took him on digs. Without even knowing she was doing it, she taught him patience. And some silly archeologist things.

A happy relationship was a lot of give and take. He knew it. But still he felt quite like a thief. He may have given her everything he could, he had also taken everything she had. He spent and would spend all his life making up for it, giving her both of his hearts, his time and all the wonders of the universe.

It wasn't on purpose that he had taken her childhood and her parents from her. But he willingly took her hearts, her time and her love.

 

Even her virginity.

 

He didn't know he was her first until that night. Until he started unlacing her corset after a lovely adventure in the Victorian era. "We've never done this before," she whimpered to him. He tensed and his hands stopped and settled at her waist. He knew she was very young, that Berlin hadn't been a long time ago for her but they hadn't checked diaries, because he didn't want to know how young she was and because he knew she would only start her own diary after lake Silencio.

"Berlin?" he eventually dared to ask.

"First time I see you since that."

His hands came to her back again as he started to redo her laces. "It doesn't have to be now—it doesn't have to happen at all if you don't want to." As much as he wanted her, wanted their timelines to remain intact, he didn't want her to feel forced to comply to a future already written. He'd taken enough from her. Not her freedom. Not ever. "My past doesn't necessarily have to be your future—you won't destroy the universe or create a big hole in the space continuum by making your own choices," he told her.

She stopped his hands and took them in hers. "I do want to", she said in a very soft voice, and he felt incredibly guilty because he thought that what he'd just said had pushed her to made her decision.

She smiled, because River always knew.

"I know I can make my own choices, sweetie. It's what I've done in Berlin. Killing you was their idea, loving you was mine," she mumbled and then flushed, not quite meeting his eyes.

She fumbled a bit with his bowtie, still refusing to meet his eyes, and then leaned up to whisper in his ear.

"I want it to be you."

He frowned and then froze, trying to figure out what she implied.

"You've never done this before? Never? Even being Mels?"

She looked up at him and he knew it was a yes. It all made sense after all, after she'd tucked her head under his chin and he'd cradled her while she told him about her past, the fear of letting anyone in. She didn't remember a lot of her aborted childhood as Melody Pond, but she remembered being hurt and neglected. All she knew was the friendly hugs of Amy and Rory and the violence of the Silence. She'd never let anybody in because she was too afraid of being hurt. She was a big ball of complicated feelings, rage, anger, loneliness, revenge and suspicion.

"And the two hearts. We had a ball at the end of the year in high school. Amy convinced me to come one time, and she even managed to get me to dance with a boy. It was a slow and he hugged me so close...I was so afraid he would notice and think I was a freak."

He took her hands then and placed each one over one of his hearts. "Two as well. Both yours," he spoke so softly she almost didn't hear him. She turned unsure eyes to him.

"You said you love me. In Berlin." She placed his hands on her waist and held them there. "Now it's time to prove it. And don't look so afraid, because I am, I truly am and we don't have to be two."

He knew it oddly reassured her to know he had already done this with her, that he knew her and her body even better than she currently did.

"I'm not scared, not of this. It's the amount of trust. You shouldn't trust me like that, River. Because it's going to hurt. I'm going to hurt you."

"I know. I'm a big girl, I know a bit about anatomy."

He flushed and then repressed a chuckle. "No, I wasn't talking about that. Loving me, River—our relationship, our complicated, non-linear timeline. This is going to hurt."

She kissed him then and he kissed her back with a restraint that soon vanished when her mouth opened under his, allowing him to deepen the kiss.

 

He was achingly careful with her, gazing questioningly at her as if to ask permission for everything he did and studying her face and every one of her reactions.

"Tell me if I go too fast or too far. I won't do anything you aren't entirely comfortable with," he told her as he started to unlace her top.

He undressed her slowly because they had all the time in the world and she was dressed in Victorian fashion. So there were a lot of layers, a lot of clothes to slowly pull off to eventually reach the skin.  
He let her undress him, guiding her hands to the buttons of his shirt, then trousers. He kissed almost every inch of skin he could reach and kissed her almost everywhere she'd never thought of being kissed before, her shoulder blades, behind her knees, the inside of her wrists and elbows, her ankles. He caressed her in the most intimate way, feather-like with his fingertips and then with the whole hand, stroking her soft curves, all loving and worshipping. He kissed, licked and stroked and made the foreplay last for what seemed to be hours.

He breathed the air that came from her lungs and she breathed his. He showed her every place she liked to be touched, every stroke that made her moan.  
He reached for her temples, quite automatically, then abruptly stopped himself and looked at her questioningly. But she knew it was only instinct for him and she reached for his mind with her own. He invaded her mind, her bright, brilliant mind, wide open to him because she didn't know yet how to protect herself and because even this young she seemed to trust him with everything.

It did hurt a bit, but when it did she knew he felt it too through the psychic link. He stiffened a little between her legs and they both let out strangled moans. Then he kissed her slowly on her forehead, then her cheeks, along her chin before pressing soft and unhurried kisses to her mouth, and he buried his head in her neck as he slowly started to move.

That amount of love and trust. That willingness to share everything. It kind of scared her too.


	3. On a cloud

He attempted to find her again, but he didn't try to land on Stormcage. 

She hadn't been incarcerated there in this timeline. 

Amy had remembered two different childhoods. One with a crack in her wall and her aunt Sharon as only family, and one with no crack and her parents. He remembered two different lives with River. One in which she'd served a life sentence for his murder and one in which she'd never done it. Time had been rewritten when he'd deleted himself from some databases in the universe. Not "every database" as River had suspected, but definitely all of those were related to River's imprisonment. 

He didn't want everyone to forget him. Not UNIT, not his friends. Not even the Silence. 

They'd given him River. 

He went to Luna University, and was told there wasn't any student with that name. He tried to set the coordinates right but no matter how hard he tried, he always landed too early. 

 

He even got angry at his beloved TARDIS. 

"You're always bringing me where I need to go? Don't you think all I need right now is her?" he yelled to her. 

She only hummed in a soothing manner in response. 

What was giving importance to life was that time was flying. Nothing would matter if everything didn't end. Vincent Van Gogh had committed suicide and painted sunflowers for Amy, Virginia Woolf had killed herself too and he'd played chess with her. 

He'd been a widower before being a husband. 

Theoretically, nothing could keep people away from him. Neither the distance, nor time or death. He could still find a time when his wife was alive, pick her up before his younger self arrived to get her and drop her back for him right on time. He could stretch her life to be with her one more time, even if it'd have been reckless. Deaths and losses didn't make any sense when you were a time traveller. 

Things weren't that simple. If they were, he'd have visited Amy and Rory in Manhattan. He knew River had managed it once. She'd always been better than him with punctuality, and a vortex manipulator was more compliant than a TARDIS. 

He'd never understood that huge incoherence, more than that, that paradox that could blow anyone's mind. He only knew it was what made life beautiful and precious. Ignorance was bliss in a time traveller's life. "Spoilers" weren't there so much to protect their timelines but to protect their free will. He had done everything he could to prove himself and to prove to River that they were free. He had offered her dresses he'd never seen her in and taken her to places she'd never spoken of. Sometimes he had felt time shifting or being rewritten, and he knew she had felt it too. He recalled dates with her that had never happened and he woke up sometimes with new memories of her. Their memories and their timelines were patchwork-like. 

He didn't even understand how such a mess worked. But it did. Amy had defied her future for Rory, he had cheated death because he had known of it in advance and River had torn time apart for him. 

Everything was possible. 

Still, it seemed like some things were meant to happen in a way and not another. He didn't have a voice in the process. Sometimes he really did believe every living thing was only some sort of puppet in the hands of somehing bigger and more powerful, playing chess with their lives, smirking and laughing in the dark at their helplessness. 

 

He retired on a cloud. If he had to mourn her, he'd do it properly. 

"You want to see the universe and I'm bound to be your driver? Very good because you know what?" he sighed, his hands fumbling with the controls on the console. "We're not going anywhere. We're staying right there on that cloud. And I'd better tell you we'll stay for a while."

Vastra and Jenny were nice to him and Strax did his best. They never asked questions, never judged him but he knew they didn't approve of his isolation. He also knew Vastra knew who he was grieving. Clever Silurian. 

He took long and lonely walks around London. He drank tea once or twice with Vastra and Jenny, he tried to cheer himself up a bit. The old girl denied him access to the bedroom he was used to sharing with River. She even relocated it so he couldn't find it anymore. He didn't get mad at her though, he knew she was only trying to protect him. Otherwise that bedroom would have been his grave. She wouldn't let him delve into his sorrow, and he didn't know if he loved or hated her for that. 

Healing was a long process but he slowly started to believe River could be grieved. He even found himself whistling without any particular reason when he headed back to his cloud after his first encounter with Clara. Sometimes, when he just looked at the sky from his lonely cloud, his mind flew back to the so old, almost time-ravaged River he'd once met. She'd said he'd been with her, wherever and whenever she'd been. She wouldn't have lied to him on this, would she? Sometimes, he wondered if he'd really get to see her aging to that point. 

 

The next evening she was here. His wife, all vibrant and alive. She was sitting on the TARDIS' doorstep, the doors flung open, waiting for him. 

"Hello Sweetie," she smiled. 

He wanted to run to her but he was frozen in shock, not quite believing she was actually here. 

"It's a romantic place, I give you that. However, isolation doesn't suit you." She met his gaze and her eyes were full of concern. "Vastra called me, she was worried about you and from what I see, I give her every reason to."

He eventually regained control of his legs, clumsily stepped toward her and she stood up to pull him close for a tight embrace. 

"I couldn't find you anymore and the old girl refused to get me to you. I thought I'd just wait for you here," he mumbled into her hair. "River, I thought you were…" His voice crumbled then and he took a deep breath. 

"Oh, but I am Sweetie, aren't I?"

He stayed quiet and she stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. 

"I'm dead, aren't I?"

She stepped back a little and laughed at his shocked look. "Not like that. I'm not actually dead." She smoothed her hands over his chest and settled them on his shoulders. "But it happened in your perspective. I died." 

He only shook his head in disbelief and she smiled sadly. "That's okay, older you told me it happened. I don't know how, I don't know when but it did." She sighed heavily. "I wasn't expecting to be immortal anyway and neither should you." 

She ran a hand over his cheek and he leaned into her touch and closed his eyes. "That's okay, you'll see me again. It's not over for us. You've got so much more to come."

He held back a sob when he heard her unconsciously mirroring what she'd told him in the Library a long time ago, and he gathered her into his arms, breathing her in, tangling his hands in her hair and tucking his head in the crook of her neck. 

"You mad, you wonderful woman," he whispered to her, and he almost felt her smile. "I've missed you so much." 

He kissed her then, all needy and demanding and she grabbed his long coat and tried to pull him inside with her. 

"No," he whispered to her, "I've got a better idea."

She chuckled lightly. "And what is it, my love?" 

He met her gaze with serious eyes, cupped her face in his hands and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. 

"We're standing on a cloud. I don't know how it's possible, it's due to the TARDIS of course, but I don't know how she managed it. I want to dance with you on that cloud."

And so they did. He brought an old phonograph he'd kept in the TARDIS since the last time they'd used it. It played a Chopin waltz. It wasn't even a proper waltz, not even made for dancing because the times were irregular and sometimes too fast. They managed it though, in a clumsy way that left them both giggling like teenagers. 

The music stopped but they kept waltzing slowly. He ran his hands up and down her back, she leaned to him, impossibly close, and somehow the waltz turned into a slow dance. 

"So, you haven't seen me for a while and when I finally show up all you can think of doing with me is dancing?" she teased him gently. "I don't know if I should find it incredibly romantic or feel offended."

He smiled and traced lazy circles on the small of her back. "I have to admit you're rather beautiful in that dress but I wouldn't mind to strip you naked." He pressed butterfly kisses to her neck. "And I will. I'll make love to you until I forget what it was like to be without you." He pressed his forehead against hers and sighed. "But for now, just knowing you're here is enough."

"I'll only stay until tomorrow morning," she whispered back and he frowned. "You've got to carry on, my love. Be the Doctor, find a new companion, run and save people." She took his hands in hers and squeezed them gently. "You'll see me again, I promise you. Now, come here." 

 

They didn't make it to their bedroom, which was nowhere to be found. They ended up on a large and comfy sofa in the library. He didn't sleep that night, staying awake to watch her sleep, gloriously naked and nestled against him. When the morning came, he brought her coffee and biscuits. She took them with a smile and he sat next to her. She remained silent for a moment, and then spoke in her most serious tone. 

"I'm afraid you're not going to see me for a while. I want you to promise me you'll be alright until we meet again."

His throat tightened at that and he closed his eyes because they suddenly felt too dry, but he knew there was no point arguing with her. She pressed her mouth against his for a languid kiss that tasted like coffee and time itself.

"I'm pretty sure trouble will find you soon, even on your cloud. There is something going on down there and even if you don't want to get involved, you can't resist a good mystery. And I've got it from very good authority that a pretty good one is waiting for you. Have you already met Clara?" 

"She's just a girl that I've saved from some snowmen. She's nothing special." 

"It doesn't sound like that. And believe me, she's not." 

"When will I see you again?" He pressed her to his chest and held tightly on to her. 

"When you'll fall," she just answered—not giving him one of her usual "Spoilers" and he could only stare at her, startled—"I'll be here to catch you."


	4. Trenzalore

It turned out Clara was anything but ordinary. 

He kept his promise to River to never travel alone. He did as he'd been told, not only because he loved her, but because he trusted her to know better than him. She had known of Clara and dragged him into the big mystery she was, giving him something to keep him moving, something to focus on and prevent himself from thinking too much about River. She'd never left him though, and he secretly hoped running with Clara was in a way running to River. He strongly believed he'd see her again when he'd figure out who Clara was. 

 

Clara had met River. Well, she'd met a ghost version of her. And it was worse than anything. 

"Don't be so gender normative," he snapped at his companion. "University professors are not necessarily men."

"Mine were mostly men," she replied, not letting herself be disturbed by his sudden anger. "And it's your fault by the way, you could have spoken of her like she was actually your lover," she added and he avoided her gaze. He'd always used "Professor Song" in the rare times he'd mentioned River to Clara. He hadn't wanted to discuss her, never mind call her River. It was the name he'd used with her parents, because calling her Melody would have been for them too painful a reminder. He'd used "Professor Song" quite a few times, and it was either teasing her or acknowledging how brilliant she was by using the title she'd earned. But "River" had always been the name that he'd cried out when pleasure overwhelmed him and left him lost to everything but the feel of her. "River" was the name he'd whispered to her in a myriad of subtle tonal shades, saying love, need, care or desire. A far too intimate word to be spoken without making her absence excruciating. 

He questioned Clara about Trenzalore. Fear and sorrow overwhelmed him and he choked back his tears and flew away from his companion and her worried eyes. 

 

He kissed his wife on Trenzalore, kissed her data ghost like she was made of flesh, soft, warm and real under his hands. He kissed her, his lips leaving hers only to meet them again and his hands cradling her face. It felt good and it hurt like hell. Like an apology for letting each other down. 

Afterwards, after he'd saved Clara from his timestream and they'd all gone to rest in Vastra and Jenny's home, he talked with his companion over a cup of tea. Drinking tea had always felt nice after a traumatizing event. He told her about the Time War and his former self whose existence he'd chosen to deny. He thanked her in his own clumsy and demure way, and she smiled like it was enough for her to know she'd done the right thing and he loved her for that. They remained silent for a moment, and Clara looked carefully at him over the rim of her cup. 

"Did you love her? Did you love River?" she asked cautiously, avoiding his gaze and seeming to feel the need to elaborate. "Because she talked to me. She said she died saving you and you left her, you didn't even say goodbye." 

"I did," he replied softly, looking her in the eye, "I do." 

He ran a hand across his face as if to chase away memories or images that had gotten stuck there, and took a deep breath. "I knew she was there. On Trenzalore," he added, and she saw his features tense. "I kissed her goodbye," he confessed, and looked away to hide his emotion. 

"How could you?" Clara gasped in shock. "She was a ghost."

He sighed heavily and Clara backed off quickly. "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to…" 

"That's all right," he cut her off gently, and his eyes met hers. "I can see how it's an interesting question for you, you were right to ask it." He seemed to be thinking about his reply for a moment before he carried on. "There's a time, when you're in love with someone, when everything you could have shared before stops being enough. Kisses, cuddles aren't enough any more and you want to get impossibly close, to crawl under each other's skin." 

She chuckled delicately, because he was adorable when he flushed and she liked it when his shyness led him to such a kind of explanation. "You mean when people want to have sex."

"Yes, that," he agreed, but he didn't turn red like she'd expected him to. "Still, for telepathic people physical bliss wouldn't be enough. They'd want a psychic bond." 

"And that's what you are, River and you," Clara inferred. "So, how did that work? Your minds just snogged each other senseless?" she wondered. 

"No, you can't fathom what a psychic link is until you have experienced it," he said sharply, and she shrugged uncomfortably in her chair. 

"I was mentally linked with River," Clara mused. "I felt her anger when the Great Intelligence corrupted your timeline, her fear that your life and hers would be unraveled, her despair when you nearly died and there was no help she could give. She hid it but I felt it." 

"That's not the same. Our psychic bond was built on years spent together," he only breathed out. 

Clara placed a gentle and comforting hand on his. "I know. It's just that I've been thinking about her since. I wanted to know more, that's why I asked you about her. I don't want to be intrusive," she reassured him. "River tried to protect me, back on Trenzalore, and I couldn't help but think she didn't want me to make the same mistake as her." She stopped and looked up at him. "To die for you." 

She blinked tears away and he brushed a soft thumb across her cheek. His beautiful, sensitive and caring Clara he was now consoling for the death of his wife, a stranger to her. 

"But you didn't. You didn't die, Clara, and that's all that matters," he soothed her gently. "I won't explain River's past to you, I'm sorry," he added, and she nodded but caught his arm when he tried to get up. 

"You said they'd never have buried her on this graveyard. In Trenzalore," she recalled, "which means you don't know where she's buried. You weren't at her funeral," she concluded bitterly. But she didn't judge him, instead her eyes were only asking him why. 

"She can't be grieved," he explained gingerly. "I tried, I retired to mourn her but she found me and she was alive," he elaborated. "The trouble is Clara, being dead or alive is relative when you're a time traveller. What am I supposed to do? Grieve her every time she leaves me for fear I won't see her again?" he almost shouted. 

"Grieve her now that her ghost has asked you to do so," Clara urged him, "and if you eventually get to see her again, welcome it as a miracle. That's what my father would do if he saw my mother again," she whispered. 

"I'm sorry," he automatically said, "I didn't…" 

"Of course you didn't know," she interrupted him. Except he did. But he wouldn't tell her he'd once spied on her and seen her on her mother's grave. "She died when I was seventeen. Breast cancer," Clara explained. "I knew she'd been slipping away but still, I didn't accept she would no longer be there until I saw her at the funeral home. I started to grieve her when my father and I sorted through her things." He squeezed her hand in an attempt to ease her pain and she smiled at him. "That's what grieving is, Doctor. Go to River's relatives and friends, grieve her with people who've known her. It'll help." 

 

He trusted the TARDIS to bring him where he needed to go. 

He landed on Luna University, in the corridor where her office's door was. He'd never been there before, he'd usually met her at her house or at the studio flat she'd been renting while she was a student. The door was ajar and he could hear conversations and ambient noises, like the soft rustling of paper and the scratching noises of furniture being moved. He carefully pushed the door open and stepped inside. There were professors who'd apparently been given the task of emptying out the desk of their former colleague. They were all busy sorting her documents, categorizing her artefacts, inventoring and boxing up her materials to be stored. Fifty-second century and humanity was still invaded by mountains of paper. They must love it, the feel of paper, the scratches and strokes of a pen on it, the reassuring weight of heaps of paper being piled up as if it was amassing knowledge and skills. 

"May I help you sir?" offered a scrawny, white-haired and bespectacled man, with a courtesy that was concealing annoyance at being disturbed in his work. Not fitting in was plain hard and the Doctor suddenly felt uncomfortable to be unwelcome. He was unknown to these people and he didn't belong there. The university had always been a part of River's life he'd remained a stranger to. 

"Are you one of Professor Song's relatives?" inquired the man with a smile, softening a little at the Doctor's lost look. "She's invariably been very reluctant to talk about her family. But we knew she had a small one she was pretty close to. Parents and a little brother if I remember well. I've never met any of them though," the academician continued, eyeing him cautiously. 

"I'm her husband." He said it like if he was delivering a secret, in a soft and hushed voice, and the statement sounded odd because he'd never said it to anyone. He'd called her his wife many times, only to enjoy how brilliant and terrifying that word sounded, only to give himself the gentle reminder that she was his, but he'd never claimed to be her husband. He'd never had to. "If I can help you out with her things," he added after an instant of hesitation. 

"Professor Song wasn't married," an other teacher interrupted dryly, "I just had a look at her file. She was single with no family left. Besides, she'd bequeathed all her works to the university and it's our task to handle them. For any personal heirloom, you should ask her executioner." The man glared at him before adding: "Now we've got work to do. Please see yourself out." 

The Doctor sighed. She hadn't told them. Of course she hadn't. What could have been said? He didn't belong to her life here. He'd never tried to fit in, never come, never asked to meet her friends or colleagues. It'd always been only the two of them for him and he'd liked it that way, even sharing her with her parents had sometimes been difficult. How possessive and stupid he'd been. He should have married her again, a proper wedding in an actual time. He should have made her his wife here, in the century that had mattered for her. Married her in front of all those people so they would have all known who they were to each other. 

"She's always been a very secretive and defensive woman and we respect this. Everybody loved her. She was kind, generous and clever, brilliant I should say. She'd been teaching here for centuries, though she didn't age that much, we assumed she was a human mutant," the old teacher said, patting the Doctor's arm in comfort. "What a tragedy," he sighed heavily. "I'll lead you to her executioner, River left her last will and testament, maybe there's something for you." He took a picture frame that was standing on River's desk and handed it to the Doctor. "That's her. Well, one of them. She had a twin. I've never been able to distinguish them. Unlike River." 

The Doctor gasped, and his fingers were shaking a little when he took the picture. Two young dark-haired women in academic dresses were smiling at him, with River between them, looking at them, all smug and protective. He knew their faces too well and he instantly knew who they were, but he didn't understand how there could be two of her. 

Two echoes of Clara.


	5. The undertaker

She was older than the Victorian Clara he'd met before and the Clara who was currently travelling with him. She was in her early thirties, he would say. It was astonishing how much she looked like this Clara, even if her hair was cut shorter and she was wearing a lady's suit that made her look older. 

"Doctor Oswald. Nice to meet you," she said with a weak smile, and gave him a handshake. 

"Hello, I'm the Doctor. Did River mention me to you?" he inquired gently. 

"She left me a letter saying you'd probably come if something happened to her. And here you are." She gave him a fake smile again. "She told me about you, it was a pretty long letter," she sighed. "I knew she was keeping a lot of secrets but I couldn't fathom actually how much." She took a deep breath and continued: "Anyway, she left you a few things, I'll pack them. It would be nice if you could come to collect them in two or three days. Emptying out her house won't be hard work, I went over there this morning and there are almost no personal items. It looked like she'd never been living there." 

She stopped her flood of words and opened the doors to her office. He knew she wanted him to leave, also knew she was acting with detachment and urgency because she was trying to hide how hurt she was. He wanted to comfort her, but didn't know what to say or do. He was a complete stranger to her. Besides, fear rushed through him that he might hurt her. Every time he'd met one of her, she'd died saving him. It was her fate, what the original Clara had created her for. She was an echo but a real person as well, alive, sentient, with her hopes, dreams and feelings. He didn't want her to die for him. He didn't want the purpose of her life to be to save him. He wanted her to have her own life. 

"I think you should have this." He handed her the picture frame he'd taken from River's desk. "Which one are you?" he asked softly. 

"I'm here." She pointed with a shaky finger. "And this is my sister, Oswin. She wasn't actually called Oswin, but she hated her given name so she took a nickname. Oswald for the win, so Oswin." She laughed softly. "She died five years ago." 

"How?" he asked, reaching for her arm and leading her to her desk, where she sat and he settled next to her. 

She shook her head. "It's hardly the time to talk about that. River just died. I lost a friend and you lost your wife." She had a brief and sad chuckle. "That's weird to know she had a husband. She didn't seem the marrying kind, to us she was Professor Song, all devoted to her job." She looked at him and gave him her first genuine smile. "She kept you as a secret. It speaks volumes about how precious you were to her."

"How did you meet?" 

"She was our teacher," she said simply. "This picture was taken the day we finished our degree. I've done my thesis under her direction. My sister wasn't one to stay in an office, she wanted to do field work. She enrolled on Starship Alaska. It was her first mission, first time we were separated." She sighed and he noticed she was wringing her hands on her lap. "But it went wrong and all the crew went missing."

"What happened?" he managed to breathe out, frozen in shock. He knew damn well what had happened, but he wanted to know how much she knew. 

"River investigated. She craved to know what had happened to her former students. She found out the ship had crashed on the Dalek asylum." She shivered and he reached for her hand. "How could Daleks have any notion of what insanity is?" she wondered dryly before resuming her story. "There was a defense mechanism over there. It converted anyone into Daleks. I…I went bonkers, I wanted to go over there but River said any rescue mission would be suicide without Dalek devices to protect us from being converted. Afterwards she found out that Daleks had destroyed their own asylum."

Her voice broke and he instinctively shifted closer to her and pulled her into his arms. She let him, to his surprise, and rested her head on his shoulder. She'd lost her twin, the closest person to her because of him and he felt sick. He shouldn't be here, his hands on her back while she sobbed in his arms. How much had River known? Did she know Oswin had coped by delving into a fantasy, that her mind had remained human until the very end? Did she know it was him and her parents who had destroyed the asylum? Did she know he'd failed to save Oswin? Did she know she'd saved them all?

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said softly, and his own apology repelled him. He couldn't tell her. It wouldn't bring her sister back and it would just break her a little bit more. He'd just hurt her again. Was it what River had tried to do, urging his Clara not to create her echoes—tried to spare them all the resulting pain?

"That's okay. It's not your fault," she replied softly and he wanted to tell her everything, so she would slap him, scream at him, hate him and give him what he deserved. He secretly knew it wasn't really his fault. He hadn't wanted this and there wasn't much he could have done to avoid it. But still he felt guilty. Did River see herself in those girls, tied up by a fate they hadn't chosen from the very beginning?

"River took care of me. She was always here when I needed her. That's odd, but sometimes I thought she was afraid I'd die as well." She pulled away from him and ran a weary hand over her face to wipe away her tears. "I wanted to go with her to the Library but Lux didn't hire me, he said I was too young." She looked him in the eye and he was shocked to see she looked scared. "I stole her vortex manipulator and followed them anyway. I arrived in the Library later than them, when everything had started to go wrong and everyone was running away from the Vashta Nerada. I saw you, even if you didn't look like the current you. But now I know it was you, River left me a book with all your faces." She stopped speaking and he let her. He was hanging on every word. "I hid because I knew I shouldn't be there and River would have been worried about me. I came to her at the very end, a few minutes before she died. I've always been good with computers and I thought I could work it out, save her, save everyone." 

"But you would have died," he stated in a toneless voice. 

"Funny thing is, I didn't care at the moment. I just wanted to save her, no matter the cost. I just felt like it was my fate, what I had to do. It was like all my life had led me to this particular moment," she explained. "Now I'm glad she didn't let me, she urged me to go, to use the vortex manipulator to come back here. I did as I was told and here I am," she concluded sadly. 

"And you did well. River's death was a fixed point, there's nothing you could have done," he agreed as realization hit him. All those echoes, they'd all saved him, some of them had died for him because the original Clara created them for such a purpose. All those girls born to save him. Clara had truly cared about River, she'd cared so much that one of her echoes had tried to save her. But River had known better, she'd set the girl free. 

"Would you come to the ceremony tomorrow?" 

He must have looked lost because she elaborated: "All the people she saved, they want to pay a tribute. It will also be a commemoration for the crew members who died. Lux's the only survivor and he's the one planning everything."

"What about the funeral?" 

"You mean you don't know? Cremation's the norm now, it was done in a rush just after they got the bodies back from the Library. They didn't even let the families see them. Except for River, they were barely corpses, the Vashta Nerada only left bones so it would have been quite an awful sight. They gave the ashes back to the families. Maybe you could get River's."

Everything sounded so morbid that he closed his eyes. He barely felt tears rolling down his cheeks, only warm arms wrapping around him in a welcoming embrace. 

He would come to see Doctor Oswald again, checking if she was fine, sometimes watching over her from afar, other times coming to talk to her. They always talked about River because it felt good and right to have someone whom he could talk to, someone who knew and loved River as well. She became a mighty archaeologist and a lecturer for the university. 

He never told his Clara. 

 

The TARDIS brought him to the funeral home and he fought back the urge to run away from there as quickly as possible. He waved his psychic paper at an employee and asked to see River. 

"We were waiting for you," the man nodded. "There's already an undertaker there to lay out the body. Luna University asked us to cremate the corpses as soon as possible but we wanted an autopsy. She's the only one that hadn't ended up as a skeleton."

"Please, show me the way," the Doctor managed, barely believing he'd been mistaken for a forensic scientist.

The employee left him in a little cloakroom. He didn't put on an overall, a mask and over-shoes but fought to calm down and gathered his courage. The electrical shock had burned her mind and stopped both her hearts but her body had remained intact. He'd asked Lux to take care of her first and barely looked at her, still cuffed to the rail. Centuries later, the thought of facing her lifeless body still felt like it was too much to be borne. He eventually pushed open the door of the mortuary and entered the large, cold, white and sanitized room. 

"I'm still not believing they thought you were here to do a post-mortem examination. You look way more like the widower if they'd asked me," said a man who'd looked up at him when he came in. He had short grey hair, piercing blue eyes and thick eyebrows. His face was marked with soft lines and he looked in his mid-fifties. He was bending over the table where River lay, looking at her with deep and familiar sadness. The Doctor swallowed with difficulty. 

"You don't look like an undertaker either. You're wearing black, which is in some Earth countries considered as the color of mourning," he said, walking slowly toward the other man until he was close enough to look directly into those blue eyes. "You can't be who I think you are, can you?"

"Hello," said the other man, pulling a screwdriver that looked exactly like his from an inner pocket. "I'm the Doctor. And so are you." He smiled. "I always thought I'd been too cowardly to come here, but it all makes sense now. I'm the furthest along in our timeline. You won't remember this."

"How can you be? I'm the last Doctor, I saw my grave on Trenzalore…"

"Spoilers," the other Doctor interrupted him rudely. "If I had to quote our departed wife I'd say it's a long story, it's not to be told, it has to be lived." His eyes narrowed and his voice was low when he spoke again: "Shall I remind you you didn't come here for me?" he asked, and his younger self followed his gaze down to River's body. 

"We have to get her out of this spacesuit," he spoke weakly, and the other Doctor nodded. "We didn't save her from it when she was a little girl, we let the Silence get her after Lake Silencio. We owe her that," he added. 

And so they did. Young and large hands met thin and old ones as they stripped her down to her underwear in heavy silence. It was a quick and easy job. She'd been brought here soon after her death and she was supple and still slightly warm in their hands. He almost broke down, seeing their hands on her and recalling that particular birthday when an other him had shown up and their four hands had been wandering across her shuddering and vibrant body in equal adoration. Her lifeless body was almost an unbearable sight, and he silently thanked whoever had closed her eyes. 

"That's okay. I'll take care of her," his older self soothed him, and he was instantly reminded that this man knew exactly what he was feeling. He stepped back a little, his eyes never leaving River. 

The spacesuit had in a way protected her and only her face and hands had burn marks on them. He watched as his older self dressed her with her academic dress, black with dark red edges. He undid her ponytail and combed out her hair with patient and attentive hands. He gently stroked a thumb over a scar on her cheek. "Her body did try to regenerate. Even though she didn't have any regenerations left and her hearts had stopped beating," he said in an absent tone. 

"They'll burn her."

"It's better off this way. Human plus, her body is a bit of a miracle, even dead. Besides, you know how humans are in this century. They're afraid of what death really is. They want it painless and quick, they want neat and nice bodies. Corpses are awful, they're stinky, disgraceful and lifeless. They don't look like the loved one you have lost. They stopped doing funeral vigils and wakes, even gave up on expensive embalming." 

"They believe fire purifies the pain and transforms it into light," the Eleventh Doctor said, dark and gloomy. 

"Well, that's rubbish," the other one snapped. "Bodies are boring, she had three of them. If she had a TARDIS she'd have a time-scar, a trace of her path though time and space, but vortex manipulators aren't sentient." He looked up at his former self with serious eyes. "Don't let yourself be too affected by what we did today. Her mind's in the Libraryʼs hard drive. This isn't her, just a body."

"Then why do you care?" 

"Because I'm a foolish idiot. And I happen to love her," he replied and his voice was a bit brittle. "Now, give me your bowtie."

"I'm sorry, what?" 

"Give it," the order came again, and he obeyed quickly. 

His older self wrapped the bowtie carefully around one of River's hands, covering a scorch as a bandage would. "You won't remember this until youʼre me, but I want you to take this advice: don't think too much about her death, it happened years before you properly fell in love with her and it didn't stop you." Deep and knowing eyes met his. "Don't be a widower, be a husband. You've got more to come and she'll need you as much as you need her." 

"Is it over for you?"

"I'm like our tenth self, a Doctor she gets to see very rarely. So yes, I'm saying goodbye. You're the lover, I'm the undertaker. I'll ask for her ashes and scatter them in space. Now I think it's high time you left."

He left the room with one last glance at River and his future self, knowing that once he passed the door he wouldn't remember any of this. He would think he was a coward and silently promise himself to come back someday. He would notice he was missing his bowtie and wonder where he had lost it. 

"Rest now, my warrior," he heard his older self whispering to his wife.


	6. Christmas

He knew he wouldn't end the war. War would end him. 

Tasha didn't call it war, though. In her mind, it was protecting the peace. But he'd seen pain, loss and sorrow. He'd fought, he'd killed, he'd shed blood and set fire to Christmas. To him, this sounded very much like war. 

Sometimes he wished he could just talk to the crack and tell the Time Lords to stop calling. 

But he couldn't, he knew this only answer would be his name. So he'd let the silence fall over him. 

Still he fought. He fought to protect the peace in the universe, the people of Christmas, and everything he'd always stood for, hopes and dreams for better days. 

The people of Christmas seemed to love him. They knew though. They knew he was the one who had ended the last Time War, and trapped the Time Lords in another dimension. They knew that was him they were calling endlessly. They knew they were casualties in a cold war between Time Lords, Daleks and many others. A cold war didn't mean no battlefields. 

The people of Christmas were simple people, living on farming and crafts, but they were wise and clever. They were brave and hard-working, and he was still amazed by how they managed to get everything to grow out of this cold, frozen ground. It was a beautiful and yet disturbing sight, those cornfields in the snowy landscape of Trenzalore. 

They lived on short-lived victories, day-to-day little miracles. With the help of the Silence, Christmas was most of the time a peaceful place. It was dark and quiet, and a good place to die. 

He was respected above all among the adults, but the majority of them kept their distance from him. They formed a little, traditional society, where everyone knew everyone. He wasn't a father, a brother or a friend. He was the stranger and the hero. The Time Lord, the one that had fallen from the sky to save them all from his own people. The one for whom Christmas mattered, even if it was a little planet, isolated and unimportant. As years went by, the story of how he had come to Christmas had become a story passed on from one generation to the next one. They didn't love him as one of them, they loved him as a protector. The children loved him as a story-teller, a Santa Claus in purple. A magician. He kept his long-gone friends close to him by telling them their stories. 

Sometimes he feared they might love him like a god, and he hoped they were too wise to turn all this respect and love into worship. Still he felt like their lonely God. Alone, and yet so close to his home and his people. Sometimes, it seemed like their calls were lulling him to sleep at night. 

He missed his ship. He missed Clara, Amy, all the others and the awful lot of running. He missed River. He hoped she'd keep her promise, because here was where he'd fall. 

 

He lost a leg, shot by a Cyberman. It had to be amputated almost up to the hip. The people of Christmas carved a wooden leg for him. It was a strong prosthesis, on which he could rely. But it was archaic, it had no tech in it, nothing to help him to move it. He could have asked Tasha for a better one, but he only avoided her questioning eyes the next time he came to see her. 

Everything became more difficult. To walk, to wash himself, to get dressed, undressed and into bed. He relearnt everything. And if his walk was stiff and clumsy, at least it was steady. 

He experienced some phantom sensations in his missing limb. It hurt, it ached. He tried to convince his old brain he didn't have that leg anymore, but it didn't work that much. Sometimes, he caught himself absently rubbing his wooden leg over the fabric of his trousers. Somehow it eased the pain. 

He told himself he didn't care, but he still closed his eyes when his fingers skimmed along his own body in the shower. 

 

Three hundred years had passed when the TARDIS came back. And she came back with Clara.  
They watched the dawn on Trenzalore together. Handles died and he pretended the way it affected him wasn't a proof of how lonely he was. 

They found out Tasha and all the Silence's bishops had been turned into Daleks. Tasha saved the day, and she was beautiful and magnificent. He kissed her, fierce and rude, and that was strange because he thought this aspect of himself had hidden somewhere deep, deep inside him. 

He sent Clara home. He had no right to bury her there with him. 

It became a little bit more difficult to stay, now that the TARDIS was there. But he held on, and stayed faithful to Christmas. He was too old, too much of a cripple to travel anyway.

The people of Christmas needed him. And he had a tomb waiting for him. 

 

He woke up one night, feeling a presence, someone close to him. His eyes searched in the dark and she came closer, until she was sitting on his cot. She reached a hand to stroke his hair, and he dragged her to him until she was curled up beside him. Then his arms enclosed her for fear she'd fade. He breathed in the very scent of her, and she smelled like winter, dust and home. She pressed a frozen kiss to his forehead and he thought it was his most tangible dream so far. 

He clung to it. 

She was still there when he woke up in the morning. His eyes travelled up her body, and she was all pale curves and smooth angles, softened by the firelight. She'd shrugged off her coat, scarf and boots and she was wearing a black woollen dress with white tights. He could tell she was old, there were lines on her face and apparent veins on her hands. He reached for them–her small, weary, yet capable and strong hands–and laced his fingers with hers. He'd waited for her, hoped for her. But now he wasn't sure he knew what to do. 

She was still sleeping, soft and quiet beside him, and he didn't want her to wake up. If he did her eyes would wander across his old, hollow frame. She'd acknowledge his age, his lost leg. If she woke up it would mean talking, explaining. And he'd have to let her go. He told himself he wasn't holding her so tight for fear she might leave, but because River was warm, warmer than him at least–and he closed his eyes and snuggled impossibly close to her. 

She did wake up eventually, and there were her hands on his face and her mouth on his–soft and firm like a hug. There was the silence none of them wanted to break, only disturbed by the soft and wet sound of lips pressing against lips. And everything was familiar and yet different. It was reacquainting himself with her body, relearning her all over again, renewing the passion. It was reawakening long-forgotten aspects of himself. And she seemed to understand that, and her lips and hands on him told of refined skills and patience. There was his smile and hers–unsure and yet trusting, loving. And he suddenly recalled he'd been a good lover, such a long time ago. Yet he knew they needed to take this slow, because his body was old and broken and he'd lulled any desire in him to sleep. 

His kisses became more insistent, and he stole her breath from her parted, waiting lips. He longed for her and his need was aching, a strong and shuddering sensation settled low in his belly. He was hard for her, and he gasped and flushed when her hips brushed against his. He wanted to bury himself inside her, to crawl inside in every way possible, mind and body. And he wanted just as much to take his time, to press soft, almost shy kisses to her neck for hours to come and just hold her to him. 

There was the fear, because his body was wounded–crippled and sore. And he was ashamed of that deformed, tortured frame. It wasn't whole anymore, it was unbalanced. Bodies aren't important, he had had loads of them. And it was just a leg. But still, there was an empty space in the bed, something missing. Her hands travelled across his body, rested on his hips and his breath caught. They glided down and he stilled her hands with his own. She met his eyes and found fear in them. Hurt obscured hers and he kissed her, hard and fierce. She moved to cover his body with hers, and he focused on the comforting feeling of her above him, rather than the fact that he couldn't encircle her anymore with his legs. She shifted to find a new balance, and he knew she was afraid she'd hurt him. The thought undid him a little and he traced small patterns on her back in a way he'd learnt would calm her. 

He might be mangled, but he still had tough, strong arms to support himself as he managed to sit up and lean against the wall, and he opened his arms in a silent invitation. She followed him and she found her place, flush against him. She was balancing her weight on her own knees, because his lap couldn't support her anymore, and the thought broke him. She kissed away tears he hadn't been aware of. 

"Does it hurt?" she asked in a whisper. 

"Sometimes it feels like it's still there. But no, it doesn't hurt anymore," he answered. "Not physically," he added, because it was the truth. 

"You gained muscle," she said with a smile, and she stroked his arm, tracing its shape from the collarbone to the palm, until she could take his hand and press a kiss to his knuckles. He shivered at the touch. Her hand flattened on his cheek and he leaned into it, closing his eyes as her fingers mapped his aged face. They brushed back his pepper and salt hair and he felt her breath close to his ear. "I like it." 

His arms closed around her and he held her still, her face buried in his neck and his in her hair–blinded to the world, indifferent to anything but her. She was all that his world encompassed: her curls tickling his cheeks, her hands on his shoulder blades, the rise and fall of her chest, her breath on his neck and her weight in his arms. They were both old, certainly not in sync but both far enough in their relationship to not fear spoilers. 

"I want you in me," she breathed softly into his neck and he knew she wasn't talking about sex. His hands cradled her head as his mind brushed over hers, seeking hers. It had been so long that it was a bit frightening, the idea itself overwhelming. Her arms encircled his neck, and she stroked his nape, her fingers toying with his hair to distract him. Their telepathic link was tenuous, almost a whisper, but enough for him to confess need, and love, and fear. Enough for her to tell him she'd run, and for him to ask from what. She didn't answer and he let her. Questions and answers were for later. It was loud and dark in his mind and she was a candle lighting up after the storm, a flower blossoming after the rain. She gave him peace, and the tumult in his head lessened a little. She hummed a familiar tune and he hummed along with her, rocking her gently in their moment of shared consciousness. 

They had to fight to come back to themselves. They had stayed like that for what had seemed like hours, gently fading into one another, losing themselves in their embrace, forgetting where one ended and the other began. It was always hard to surrender, to give up their bond, to accept the pang of emptiness when they stopped to be one. 

This needed compensating. So she captured his lips in a kiss, and she caught his gaze when they broke apart. So open. And it was a rare, precious thing to look at him and see the love without having to hide. They undressed each other, and she shuddered because despite the fire it was cold. He slid his hand between them, cupping a breast, tracing soft circles on her belly, then dipping between her legs, working her until she cried out her pleasure. She played his body expertly and this time, when her hands fell to his hips and glided lower, he didn't stop her. She pulled his pajama bottoms down and her fingers lingered where his amputated leg ended. She traced the sensitive flesh, the odd shape of his stump and there was something embarrassingly intimate about it. 

"I didn't have enough regeneration energy left to grow another one," he said softly and she kissed his jaw, still soothing his old wound with careful, slow strokes. "I just had enough to heal it. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be," came the reply as she took him in her hand and lowered herself onto him. "You've been wounded in battle. You're my warrior," she whispered. 

His hands clenched at her hips, stilling her for a brief moment while he adjusted to her. It had been centuries, and he was afraid he wouldn't last long. That was a weird feeling, being afraid of not living up to her expectations, a fear he hadn't felt since his first time with her, so long ago. But it was River, and she was understanding, knowing and patient, especially in her old age. She soothed a hand over his chest as her hips started to rock gently against his. He dropped his head to her breasts, his arms on her back, pressing her to him as she rested a hand against the wall to steady herself while they moved together. 

He didn't make it long, not with the feel of her all wrapped up around him, surrounding him. He sighed and muttered an apology as he slid out of her and brought his fingers once more between her thighs. He kissed along her neck, his other hand seeking for her pulse and tracking the maddening beats of her hearts. He listened to her moans, low and decadent until her voice cracked at the end and she trembled in his arms. She tucked them both under the blankets, helping him to lie comfortably on his back, and she settled at his side.

"I love you," she told him. Then again, "I love you," and again and again and again, her words snuck in between kisses trailed along his chin. 

He didn't say it back. Instead he just looked at her with those big, sad, old and serious eyes. His fingers took a slow path from her hips, along her spine and to her face. "Will you marry me?" he asked and it was a whisper, a murmured question concealed in the dark of his room. 

"We're already married, aren't we?" she replied, confident but startled by his sudden solemnity. 

"Yes," he agreed. "But I'd like to marry you again, River Song, Melody Pond. Here, in an actual time and an actual place. I'd like to make you my wife before this world." He stole a kiss from her as she gasped in surprise. He hadn't proposed to her the last time, and now it felt rude. The question tasted sweet and right as he spoke it. "Will you be my wife?" 

"Yes."


	7. Until death do us part

"Tell me," he asked. "Tell me what you ran from." 

"Later," she only breathed and hid her face against his neck as she nibbled at the delicate flesh there, inching closer to him, warm and voluptuous. He felt her hands on his torso, tracing circles and gliding gradually down, and he sighed deeply. 

"River, don't do that." 

"Why not?" 

_Because I don't think your old husband is ready to do this again so soon_ , he thought to say in a cheerful voice. That lie would perhaps make her laugh. He wanted to hear her laugh again. "How many times have we shagged to avoid talking, River?" he asked instead, and felt her still against him. He didn't want it to be an accusation. He knew they'd both acted like that several times, because neither of them always knew how to be vulnerable before one another. Neither of them shared their burden easily. 

He remembered that terrible morning after Darillium. Maybe he should have told her she was running to her death. They could have run together, the same way he'd run from Lake Silencio for two centuries. She might have had an appointment with death, but he had a time machine. Instead he'd only asked her to stay in bed with him a little bit longer. He'd told her he had a time machine, and she wouldn't be late to her shuttle. She'd seen something was wrong, and he'd kissed and touched her until she stopped asking questions, and the discussion had melted into a calm, loving session of morning sex. He'd hid his face in her blond curls, utterly unable to tell her how scared he was. And the more desperate he'd grown, the more deliberately soft his touch had been. 

"Tell me, why did you run?" he asked again, more gently this time, and reached to tilt her chin up so she'd meet his eyes. She had confessed she'd run into their telepathic link and he'd felt pain, fear, and sorrow. Now he wanted to know what had happened. 

"I know this isn't spoilers, River," he said. And that frightened him, because he knew who she was. She was the River who'd run from her house, and come back centuries later, frail and old as the world. He didn't remember anything that could have made her run away. She wasn't remaining silent because of spoilers, but because of something bigger. That idea made his chest tighten as he gave her a tentative smile and stroked her cheek in an attempt to comfort her. 

"Don't ask. Please, just don't," she whispered, and it broke him to hear her voice falter and to see her lower lip tremble. She shifted in his arms and buried her face into his neck once more, and this time he let her. "Please, just do as you're told." 

And so he did. Not only because he loved her, but because he was afraid of what could have hurt her so much she wouldn't talk about it. He silently promised himself he'd ask her again, and hoped he wouldn't be too cowardly for that. He'd grown tired of all those secrets and unspoken things between them, and he got the feeling that one was important. 

 

"Doctor! Doctor!" 

He heard someone running up the flight of stairs, and he couldn't do anything before a young man burst into the room. 

"It's okay Barnable. I'm here," the Doctor said, gently pulling away from River's embrace and putting a finger to her mouth to hush her as she nearly whined at the loss of contact. 

"You didn't come for breakfast and we caught two Cybermen wandering around the tower. I was afraid they might have got you," the young man carried on. The Doctor almost laughed at his dear Barnable, who was doing his very best not to look suspiciously at River's frame beneath the bedcovers. 

"You caught two Cybermen," he wondered aloud, and frowned. Barnable wasn't the young boy who'd been afraid the Doctor would leave Christmas in his blue box anymore. He was in his mid-twenties now, one of Christmas' strongest woodcutters, and he had gotten married a few months ago. 

"They were wooden Cybermen. Inflamed arrows," the young man answered with a proud smile and a gesture to the bow hanging on his shoulder. 

"Barnable…" the Doctor sighed. He knew the people of Christmas wondered what would happen once their guardian was too weak to protect them, and he knew they'd come to the conclusion that they had to learn how to defend themselves. He knew Barnable only wanted to protect his family, his friends and his home. But still, his heart ached at the thought. His little boy had learnt the art of warfare. But he couldn't resume his sentence, that was the moment River chose to yawn loudly, lazily stretch out and sit up. 

"Well, hello," she said and waved a hand at Barnable. Her hair was a mess, and she was very much naked, but she only laughed and gave a warm smile to the young man before her as the Doctor flushed and hastily fumbled with the blankets to cover her chest. 

"Professor Song?" Barnable asked after an instant of total confusion. To be fair, he seemed more fascinated by her unruly mane of blond curls than by her nudity. The Doctor was suddenly reminded of the young boy clumsily drawing River, with her green dress, her fabulous hair, and her gun. 

"She found you!" Barnable abruptly exclaimed. "She came!" He laughed, still a bit bewildered, but as excited as a young boy meeting one of his childhood heroes. And in a way it was the case. "Everyone should know, we shall celebrate!" he proclaimed and stormed out. 

"Well then, my love," said River, "What exactly did you tell them about me?" he could tell she was trying to sound annoyed but couldn't actually hide her wicked smile. 

"Nothing untrue, wife," he replied gently. "I told them you once made a Dalek beg for mercy. They were rather impressed." 

 

"Stay," he said as she helped him get dressed. She took his wooden leg and handled it without any hesitation, and it made him all warm on the inside, to know she was already so comfortable with his infirmity. Her movements were sure and precise, but still loving. Her fingers ghosted over him like his wound was still painful and needed to be soothed.

"Well, I suppose I could stay for a while," she answered carefully, helping him with his trousers. 

"Stay forever," he replied and she looked up at him, startled, her fingers brushing over his trouser buttons but stopping when they were about to close them. He took her hands in his own and squeezed them lightly. 

"You know I can't," she argued. "I want to, but I can't. I won't take the risk of rewriting us. And I haven't lived your first encounter with me yet." 

"Yes you have," he responded firmly. He hated himself for lying so blatantly to her, but it seemed like he had to. 

"How? I don't remember anything like that!" She shook her head in disbelief, and grabbed his shirt. He remained silent for a while, watching her doing his buttons. Her brow was furrowed in worry. 

"River," he began very carefully, placing a hand on her back to draw her closer to him. He was well aware he'd regret this one day, but he needed her to stay. And he knew this was how things went. He recalled his time-ravaged River, and knew there was only one place where she could have grown old with him to that point. He knew this hadn't kept her from going to the Library. And he didn't want to think about that. She'd said older him had made her young again, and that brought out a possibility he didn't want to entertain. He knew the Time Lords needed him, and were able to give him a new set of regenerations if they were willing to. This haunted him, the idea of him surviving Trenzalore, all new and powerful. He would come back to River's home, and caress her winter-white hair with his new and unknown hands. He would pour energy into her, until she was young again and able to run faster to her death. 

"River," he began again, and he took his time to choose his words. He needed her to believe him. It was the price to pay so they would be together. He was such a foolish old man, but after all those centuries of loneliness, he thought he'd never be able to let her go. "You never asked what our first meeting was for me," he stated gently. 

She blinked, and he was delighted to hear her stammering when she eventually spoke. "I was afraid to ask. I thought maybe your first was my last." 

"It wasn't," he said proudly. And he was so very clever and such a liar, but he currently couldn't bring himself to be ashamed of it. "Remember that time when my tenth self came to Luna, looking for someone named Professor River Song?" he asked, and carried on when she nodded. "An old time-traveler friend had told me an archaeologist had done her thesis on me, and that she knew an awful lot of things about me," he continued, knowing she suspected he was talking about Jack Harkness. "I was curious." 

She seemed unsure, probably wondering if she should slap him or not. The lie had tumbled easily from his mouth, because it was a rehearsed one. Even when he'd been in his tenth incarnation, he'd known he would never tell her. He had concealed the Library behind securely locked doors in his mind. But he'd known "spoilers" wouldn't always be an acceptable answer. So he'd made up this story, and acted so it would be credible when he'd come to visit her for the first time after the Library. Lying had been easy, because he wanted to believe that lie too. 

Finally she smiled, and he knew she believed him. His chest tightened a little. She shouldn't trust him like that, and he thought he didn't deserve her. But his remorse soon vanished when she leaned in to press her lips to his. 

"Why did you never tell me?" she asked. 

"I've always thought I had started the whole 'back to front relationship' by coming to meet you, knowing you already knew me. Did our story begin when I crashed in Amy's garden, or when I chose to visit you at Luna for the first time? Anyway, I thought you might hold this against me." 

"You're not making any sense," she spoke fondly, and he smiled. "So, does that make us linear?" 

"Very much linear, love." 

"How can you be so sure I won't rewrite anything if I stay here?" 

He played with her hair, stretching the curls to watch them bounce back in perfect spirals, pondering if he should tell her or not. "I saw our graves," he spoke, and watched her eyes widen in silent shock. "I knew I'd die on Trenzalore, but I wanted to be sure. To me it was only a prophecy, you know. I went forward in time and I saw my grave, and yours. I know I probably fixed it in time by doing so. And I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry." But he really wasn't. 

She kissed him again, and he thought his lies shouldn't make him so happy. But as he cupped her face and kissed her back, he really didn't care. 

"I'll stay," she eventually said. "Until death do us part." 

He smiled at the old-fashioned wedding vow. "Until death do us part," he agreed.


	8. Waiting for dawn

"I was pregnant." 

River confessed it while sitting with the Doctor around a small camp fire on the tower's roof, roasting marshmallows and waiting for the dawn. He remained motionless, staring at her, frozen in shock. The flames were throwing shadows across her face, sharpening her cheekbones and illuminating her hair. Her face was a beautiful, collected, pale and solemn mask suspended in the darkness. Their eyes met but she quickly looked down to her lap, cradling her own head between her hands. 

"How?" he inquired. "How could you be?" 

This shouldn't have been possible. She wasn't going to tell him he was a dad, but what had made her run, and he'd seen the pain in her eyes, felt the terror in her mind. Whatever had happened, it had turned bad. 

"The regeneration energy you gave me, twice, in Manhattan and when I got the cold. This time I was ready to heal," she said, and for the briefest moment they locked eyes, hers too wide and luminous. She managed a weak smile but her lips quivered, and he craved to come closer, but before he could move she'd stood up. She went to the balustrade and gripped it tightly, her gaze lost in the snowy landscape. Christmas was such a fitting place for them to settle down at the end of their lives, their personal winter. Trenzalore stood on the edge of the big, expanding universe. The last stop before the end of time and space themselves, and that was why a remaining crack was there. He got up and joined her, his walking stick dropped to the floor and he encircled her in his arms. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, as calmly as possible. They hadn't talked about what had been done to her after Lake Silencio for a very long while. He still couldn't put up with it, and couldn't imagine how it was for her. He ran a hand over her belly, and she caught it, intertwining their fingers. 

It hadn't taken the Kovarian chapter long to realize she was more the woman who married him than the one who murdered him. Then, they'd mutilated her out of cruelty, anger and fear of the possibility of a living being made both of him and her. He'd tried to heal her, but if her body knew how to use the energy it was given, it was unwilling to. Her swollen and red scar faded to a pale shade of pink under his mending hands, but her belly remained empty. She pretended she didn't want children anyway, said their lives didn't allow them to be parents. And he let her and told himself it wasn't out of cowardice. Pretending this was their choice was less painful than accepting something had been stolen from them. Some wounds hurt deeper than just flesh and skin, and River only agreed to talk about it in the most minimal amount. For the first time, he saw his wife neglecting a body she used to be proud of. She felt like a puppet the Silence had played with and broken, and he urged her not to let them win. She blamed him, and she blamed herself as well. She didn't say anything, but he could see it in her eyes, in the distance she put between them. He knew the feeling, the guilty rancour, and the endless what ifs. 

The Silence knew he'd survived Lake Silencio, but they still charged her with his murder, and she pleaded guilty. She played their game, knowing this was revenge. They were fulfilling their own prophecy, following absurd commands, the story of an impossible astronaut and a convict archaeologist. River had only willed them to let her live her own life, and she watched as they ruined it in the century that mattered. She went to prison willingly, but he knew she'd treat Stormcage like a bed and breakfast, and plan to resume her career at Luna University. He kept her away from the dark, rainy cell waiting for her as long as he could. She declined his offer to take her to her parentsʼ home, and they spent time in the TARDIS, safe in the Time Vortex. Years after, he wondered if she'd known about her mother's own infertility. 

On her first night out of prison she met a version of him who'd come almost straight from their wedding, a him who didn't know yet what had happened to her. She studied him, the look of horror and pain on his face as his fingers followed the line of her scar. He kissed it then, and shaped it with his tongue, an acknowledgement it was a part of her as well as an apology. And she didn't let him linger there, her hands fisted in his hair to guide him lower. Ironically enough, he had thought her scar looked like a smile. 

"I got my period back and I had a scan," she answered. "Somehow I was happy, almost amazed," she continued almost shyly, and he pressed a kiss to her temple. She squeezed his hand and he clung to the little gesture, the feel of her in his arms, so close and exposed.

"You told me once how difficult procreation was for Time Lords on Gallifrey. Long life expectancy, low fertility," she explained. "You told me about looms and miscarriage." 

"Did you…" he started and she interrupted him. "No, I didn't lose it." He hugged her even tighter, because there was a strain to her voice.

"Do you remember when we talked about adoption?" He nodded and she sighed deeply. "I told you I didn't have time to waste on a child. I lied." 

"I know," he said and she turned in the circle of his arms, facing him. "River, I know," he repeated. "I know it frightened you. I understand it," he whispered. He didn't elaborate, too many fears and insecurities would be involved, and she was already trembling. His hand stroked her cheek but she didn't lean into his touch, just stared at him intently. He kissed her, her lips pressed back hesitantly against his, and those words he spoke so rarely came to him. 

"I love you." A shudder rushed through her at his admission. "And nothing will ever stop me from loving you," he added, voice low and breathy. His forehead rested against hers, he closed his eyes. "I need to know. River, did you have an abortion?" 

He couldn't bring himself to watch her reaction, instead he buried his hands in her hair, holding her close. He stumbled a bit but her grip on him tightened, anchoring him. 

"Yes." 

The Doctor opened his eyes to find hers focused on him, too bright and watery. His own squeezed shut again, too dry to keep open. His fingers traced idle patterns on her scalp, she had a weakness for hair touching, and he hoped she'd understand that he was still with her, that he would always be. Her mind blazed against his own, afraid and hesitant, but his shields didn't lower and she backed away. This wasn't what she needed, his mind was raging, a stormy bundle of complicated feelings, all tangled up and chaotic. His love for her was deep, unconditional, but currently not all of his feelings were nice. She'd hidden again, hidden something terribly big and important, but at the end of the day opened herself to him. Telling him she'd been pregnant was her first move, and he couldn't fail her now. 

"Sweetie? Talk to me. Please, just say something," she pleaded. 

He realized he was shaking too, and wondered how bad it was that he wasn't able to cry, while his throat felt so tight and his whole body was aching. He owed her words, they were needed. Carefully chosen words rather than the raw tumult of a shared consciousness. This seemed intimidating in a way letting her slip into his mind wasn't, in a way wiping her tears away with the chaste, unhurried kisses he began to pepper on her wasn't. 

"I love you," he croaked, "I love you, River." 

Curls tickled his nose as he pressed a kiss into her hair. 

"Mels." 

That long-forgotten name slithered across his tongue and stunned her. 

"Melody." 

Her given name came in a strangled whisper. 

"Whoever you are, whatever you did," he trailed off, a falter in his voice, "I love you." 

 

The sun had finally risen and bathed them in its shine. River's head turned away from his chest, toward the sun. Eyes closed, she looked like a sunflower, drawing strength from the light. She couldn't be more beautiful. The woman he'd fallen in love with, gorgeous and strong, brilliant, and fragile, all at the same time. All the little gestures he'd learnt to love, every little detail of her face he'd memorized forever, he wanted to tell her how he saw her. 

All those words were stuck deeply in his hearts. 

"I didn't want to end it," she spoke and he hung quietly onto her words, unwilling to break the moment. She was letting him in, and it was something precious and so, so moving. "We were both old, and almost out of regeneration energy. Gallifrey was gone, and I thought we had nothing to give our baby but a life of loneliness." _A lonely god aimlessly wandering the universe, much like his or her father,_ he thought.

"But it reminded me of what I said to you in Area 52," she recalled and his heart beats quickened madly at the mere mention of their wedding. It felt as if his lungs had inflated, filled up with all the love he had for her. "You're not alone, not unloved," she voiced, "our baby would have been loved." 

"I looked for the Time Lords," she added. "You saved them," she told him proudly. "Gallifrey was still somewhere out there. A home for our baby to find."

He made the slightest nod. She didn't know the Time Lords like he knew them, didn't know things weren't that simple. He wondered briefly what they'd have thought of River. A freak of nature, probably. They'd never appreciated this kind of beauty. 

"I pondered everything. I wasn't that old, I had friends at Luna, and Manhattan wasn't unreachable. Even if time separated us, I wouldn't have to raise our child alone," she finished. 

"Why then? Why did you end it?" The little smile that had crept over her lips crumbled at his question.

"The Silence tried to kill me. They sent killers after me," she said. "I thought they'd never leave me alone. I thought about my own childhood, and what they did to Amy. It wasn't safe to have this baby." 

She finally tore herself away from the sun, and he automatically drew her nearer. She tucked her head in the hollow of his neck and relaxed into him, as if the safest place in the universe was just there, and he hugged her even tighter. Holding her was vain and wouldn't protect her from her demons. Yet, it was essential. 

"They tried this before," she wept, "Between Florida in 1969 and the Pandorica for me. You were too young for me to tell you." A short breath escaped her, "I thought they were trying to rewrite time. I was part of the plan that led you to the Pandorica, and the TARDIS explosion caused the cracks. They were probably trying to clean up their mistakes, but why did they try again so late in my life?"

The realisation hit him that the Kovarian chapter could be really clever, despite all the great mistakes they'd made, and their fanaticism. They'd used their suggestive power and Vincent's hypersensitivity to have the painting done, knowing the Doctor would love a good puzzle. River had been involved without the Silence even knowing who she'd be for them. Afterwards, they must have thought better of it. Amy wouldn't have remembered him without the help from River's diary, and he wouldn't have come back. But without River the Pandorica plan wouldn't have happened at all, because she was the one who'd given him Vincent's painting. No exploding universe, no cracks. River wouldn't even have existed, not in the way she currently did at least, because things would have happened differently for Amy and Rory. The Silence tried to rewrite everything, and should they have succeeded they wouldn't even have created a paradox loop. This wasn't rewriting time in a common fashion, this was cancelling their own work, unravelling everything they'd done. 

"Because they hated us," he answered darkly. "Probably out of revenge." 

She nodded, and it was a relief that she couldn't see the worry in his face as his mind flew back to the Library. The Silence likely hadn't known River herself had lured him over there, they had probably planned to rewrite everything, let his tenth self die and time clean up all their mess. A low rage rose inside him, a murderous wrath against Kovarian and the Silence. All of them, even Tasha. 

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," he whispered, tense in her embrace. She'd been the one to run away, but blaming her would do more harm than good. Still, a part of him believed he could have protected them both, had she spoken to him. 

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," his wife replied and he softened a little. "I came here for answers," she muttered a moment later. "And I talked with the Mother Superior, she promised she'd stop Kovarian." 

"That's new," he teased her. "River Song, delegating." 

"Stop it," she said fondly and nibbled at his skin in retaliation. "I wouldn't be able to work this out without slaughtering everyone, that's all." 

He smiled softly at that. "It's getting dark." 

They held onto each other until the darkness engulfed them completely. 

 

They got married in a cornfield. 

They knew they were laughing at fate, but it reminded them of Leadworth in the summer, Amy and Rory, a red car and a dark-skinned girl with a gun. 

The people of Christmas thought it was a Gallifreyan religious ritual, something to do with Mother Nature and harvest time giving life its rhythm. Trenzalore had two gods, the snow and the sunlight. One of them was omnipresent, covering the fields and the hills, whitening the lands and muffling the sounds. The other one blessed them once a day, only for a few and precious minutes. Everyone was there, all the people of Christmas in their Bavarian-styled clothing, and the Doctor knew it was a token of love. The children knew who River was, the mighty archaeologist, the super-hero, his wife. He didn't know if they'd told their parents or if everyone had just known all this time that he'd been waiting for someone, but he only caught knowing smiles as he glanced around. 

They were all standing, numb and frozen, waiting for the sun to bless them. They had brought torches, little flames that had lightened their path in the darkness and were now dancing all around them. He wore his purple suit, and River was in black once again. The sun rose eventually and he held River's hands. There wasn't any priest or official to lead the ceremony. It wasn't how things worked in Christmas, this was their marriage, their union. It was up to them to find the right words. 

"Make sure this isn't corny," River chuckled and wrapped an arm around his waist as he faltered a bit in the snow. Her nose had reddened due to the cold, and he resisted the urge to kiss its top. 

"Whatever you do, don't say your name!" a woman yelled and the crowd laughed before returning to its silence. 

The Doctor looked at their joined hands, only bare and chilled skins with no bowtie in the way. 

"Do you want me with you on the slow path, Sweetie?"

"Yes."


	9. Tasha Lem

She played with fire.

Three days before the Time Lords had stopped calling, and the Doctor watched silently as River studied the crack. It hadn't closed, it was still there, wide open and cavernous. A tear in the skin of reality, and a silent promise of war and devastation. A sharp light was still exuding from it, blades of light between River's fingers as her hands ghosted over the crack, tracing its shape, almost slipping in its opening.

"Be careful," the Doctor growled.

It wasn’t like they'd actually been hearing the call like distinguishable, clearly spoken words. It had been more like a murmur, a silent question that sounded like a litany, something buried deep in their minds. Something they'd tried to ignore, but of which they'd been constantly aware, like a recorded message played on repeat. River put her electronic device back in her bag with a soft sigh, and looked up at him. Going by the look on her face, he couldn't tell if it was good or bad news.

"They can't come back," she eventually said. "The crack, its opening's too narrow. There's not enough time energy streaming from it to allow them to pass through. But you already know that, don't you?"

"I know they must have been in need of help, otherwise they wouldn't have called me," he admitted. "The one that trapped them," he added darkly.

"They must have just realized they can't come through. That's why they stopped calling, it was hopeless," River continued and her husband nodded. "Time must be going faster in their universe. They have probably been calling for only a few hours or days in their perspective."

She remained silent for a while, lost in her thoughts, and he clumsily dropped to the floor besides her. He found himself automatically reaching for her in comfort, and in no time he was in her arms, her head resting on his shoulder.

"Maybe a passage is possible," she mused. "But just one. A one-way ticket, for only one person. But who would?" she wondered. "Be stuck here, with you, as the last two Time Lords."

"The last three," he contradicted her, and she cracked a smile. "Maybe if they're desperate enough. Maybe the only one mad enough would. The one who already knows what it's like."

"Would you like to see him again?" River asked. 

He didn't answer and she pressed a soothing kiss into his hair, holding him tighter. She whispered his true name when she pulled   
back, and he laughed. A light, amused sound that rocked through her, and made her giggle reflexively.

"So, you've figured out that wasn't really my name they wanted?" he stated. "Professor Song, you clever girl."

He shifted in her arms to catch her mouth in a kiss. His teeth scratched along her lower lip, biting gently, toying, and her hands roamed across his back and finished their course messing with his hair. He marvelled at how compelled to touch each other they were, everywhere and any time they could, as if any of them would suddenly vanish into thin air, or out of fear one of them would just leave or disappear suddenly. He'd thought knowing she wouldn't leave, at least not for a while, would have tamed his craving to be close to her, but it hadn't. He felt the constant need to reassure himself she was there, alive and tangible. The need to treasure every minute spent with her drove him.

"They were asking for your help," she replied when he let her breathe again. "The question was only a way to lure you in, because they knew anyone would have linked this silly question with you. The answer isn't that important. They're only keeping it secret out of respect for you, because they know why you're hiding it."

"Clever girl," he breathed out again before kissing her once more. 

He pressed her to him, and inhaled the very scent of her. She smelled of her favorite shampoo and the soap she'd washed herself with barely an hour before, of lavender and a touch of vanilla, and of time and something that was uniquely hers.

"You let everyone think your name has the power to free the Time Lords, because it maintains the status quo. It gives you the upper hand. They won't attack massively for fear you will unleash the Time Lords. For now, they only made small incursions to find the source of the call. Before they attacked the Papal Mainframe, they didn't even know who was the Doctor," River carried on.

"They can't blow up the entire planet. They don't have enough power to. They would need a mass destruction weapon, like the Moment I thought I'd used to destroy Gallifrey, and they don't have it. Besides, destroying Trenzalore wouldn't close the crack. It's not on the planet, it's in the structure of reality itself. It would reopen in the void just where the planet had been," he added in soft whispers, spoken like secrets. "They're only targeting the townspeople because they want to start the war. Between them and I or them and the Papal Mainframe, them and the Time Lords. At that point, I don't even think it matters anymore. Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, they're not ones for passivity. They grew tired of waiting."

She was drawing idle patterns on his back, trying to soothe the anger she'd felt rising inside him. He did his best to calm down, focusing on her breathing. Nice and deep breaths, in, then out.

"Do you think they're still close to the crack? The Time Lords, I mean," she inquired once she thought he felt better.

"I don't know," he mumbled in the hollow of her neck. He was so tired, so very tired of that endless cold war. It was made of a lot of waiting, anticipating and fearing what would come next. So many little battles. All he wanted was to forget everything but River and the firm reality of her warm skin against him. He wanted to delve into the quiet, comforting silence of his room now that the Time Lords had finally shut up.

River began singing then, a Gallifreyan traditional ballad he'd once taught her. Except it was barely singing. She was just humming the tune without forming any words, but he knew her melody was asking for the complete song. He didn't hum along with her, but he let her cradle and rock him gently as she went.

"Nothing's going to happen," he whispered.

"Shut up," was her response.

Then he heard them. Hundreds, maybe thousands of voices answering her, shaping the words she'd seemed too shy to let out. The long forgotten voices of his people, distant, but made loud by their numbers. They were joining his wifeʼs voice in a clamor, a choir that sent a shudder of emotion rocking through him. It moved him in waves and waves in sync with the music, and he listened to them with all of his being. He listened intently to the voice of the woman he loved as she began to sing along, and to the voice of his kind. There, in her arms, his head on her chest, feeling her hearts beating madly in her ribcage, he felt more at home than he had in centuries.

"Oh, my love," River murmured, and he realized the song was over. "My love," she said again and he became aware of his tremors. He cried then, longer and louder than his current body ever had, and for all the time his breakdown lasted, River rocked him and wiped his tears away, whispering his true name, snuck in between nonsense made to bring him back to himself.

"They're gone. They're gone," he only choked out when he found enough breath to speak.

 

Tasha Lem looked like a raven.

It was mostly because of her outfit, her ceremonial dress and a black feathered cloak she'd put on to brave the cold of Christmas. She seemed exhausted—almost sick—but if both River and the Doctor did notice her pallor and the dark circles under her eyes, neither of them dared to mention it.

It was the first time in a bit more than three centuries that she was coming to Christmas. If he didn't know better, the Doctor would have said she'd been afraid to come, but he knew what had held her back. She belonged with the church, not among the people they were protecting. The townspeople came to her because the Doctor had let them know what she was doing for them. They craved to know her better, but they saw the look of embarrassment on her face and quickly backed away with soft and understanding smiles. 

"They just wanted to thank you. Maybe get you to stay for dinner, that's all. They look up to you, you know. You're inspiring them," the Doctor said once they were in his room in the tower.

Tasha only replied with one of her most severe glances. She thought she didn't deserve any gratitude, and the Doctor knew she felt guilty for not being able to end the war. He knew it well, because he felt the same.

"We're going to lose, River," Tasha eventually spoke. "They're all going to come here and set fire to Christmas. My force fields won't resist much longer. The call stopped, and I tried to tell them the Time Lords won't come, but they think it's a trick," she added urgently.

It startled him that she chose to speak to River, rather than to him—who'd been there from the very beginning—and it surprised him even more to see that his wife had taken Tasha's hand. He remembered, of course, what both Tasha and River had told him. How Tasha had tracked little Melody, and how she'd come to her just after her first regeneration, when she was a lost toddler in the middle of New York. He knew the Kovarian Chapter thought River was only Melody's second incarnation because Tasha had hidden Mels so well in plain sight, in the only time she'd been able to be with her parents without crossing her own timeline. Tasha had been the one to convince Kovarian that a child needed some toys, and to take a picture of Amy at Demonʼs Run to give to little Melody. She'd told Amy her Raggedy Man and her Centurion were coming to get her, and that was why Amy was smiling so brilliantly on this picture. However, the Doctor hadn't expected the two women to be so close to one another. River didn't say anything, but squeezed Tasha's hand in comfort—a small gesture he'd never allowed himself to do in all those centuries of fighting alongside her—and Tasha finally looked up at them. 

"I've sent all my clerics home. Only a few confessional priests stayed."

"Why?"

"They couldn't take the Daleksʼ influence, and they remembered they'd died. They felt like corpses, only alive and well because the Daleks wanted their puppets. They needed their homes and families," Tasha replied, and her fingers shook as they ghosted over the wound she had on her forehead.

"They're going to die."

"They're going to die in peace. They're not like me, Doctor, and most of them had only been there for a few years when the attack happened."

Tasha didn't often speak about her condition. She hadn't chosen to be against aging, and she considered it a curse. He knew what the church had done to her. A little girl, a little chosen one conditioned from her birth to be one day the Mother Superior of the Papal Mainframe. He'd met her for the first time when she was still thinking she could escape her faith, but by the time he'd seen her again she'd chosen to embrace it and make the best of it. She'd been married to Kovarian, but the Doctor knew Tasha couldn't put up with what had been done to River. He'd seen the similarities between Tasha and his wife a long time ago, and had suspected Tasha had been used as a model in Melody's education. Afterwards, he'd learnt Melody had truly been inspired by the Mother Superior. 

"My power is contested. By my own clerics, by the monks and by other religions," Tasha continued before she stopped herself abruptly, as though she feared she'd admit how scared and lost she felt. She didn't have to, it was written all over her usually so composed features.

"You're still the Mother Superior and the people here believe in you. If the Daleks want war, then we'll be ready. You're not alone, mother," River said.

Her husband waited for her to add "Superior", but the title didn't come, and he watched in awe as River leaned in to press a kiss to Tasha's forehead, right where a Dalek's gunstalk could appear at any moment. Tasha closed her eyes, River smiled, and he understood his wife had never really ceased to be a soldier of the Silence. Except she'd chosen to reject Kovarian and fight with Tasha Lem.

 

"I cheated on you with Tasha," he said later, and didn't really want to ponder why he felt the need to confess it to River. Honesty, probably. "I'm sorry. Not much happened, but I did flirt with her, kissed her once, and wondered what she'd look like with her hair down," he admitted softly.

"If what you call cheating is seeking comfort, affection, mental and physical closeness when I wasn't there for you," his wife replied equally softly, "then I had been unfaithful too."


	10. The slow path

Christmas had burnt.

This had been war in all its rage and fury, and all he'd seen was fire, darkness and devastation. The town was destroyed, all empty streets and knocked down houses, and everything was to be rebuilt. The faces were worn out, already mourning, and everyone knew the mending would be slow. It had been the biggest battle Christmas had faced so far. Tasha had done her best to convince the dioceses under her command that she was still able to run the Papal Mainframe and win the war. River helped her put some make-up on her forehead wound. It was a stain she usually wore fiercely—a visible proof of what she'd overcome—but she knew the bishops would only think about the Dalek inside her if the tear in her skin was too obvious. She'd looked strong and reliable, and most of them had agreed to send some of their troops to Trenzalore.

Soldiers who'd only met their death there.

The Daleks had been slaughtered, and it would take them a while to recover. They wouldn't be able to attack for long—perhaps centuries—and the Cybermen had left Trenzalore. But this was for the good news. The human losses among the Church were terrible, and Tasha's look of devastation said how bitter the victory was. The number of victims among the townspeople wasn't as terrible as feared—because they'd been able to hide the children and the elderly safely in the forest—but there were broken families and orphans. In this little town where everyone knew everyone though, one couldn't be totally alone or abandoned, and there were always aunts and uncles, friends and neighbours to take care of those children.

Barnable handled him a toddler with great care, and the Doctor took the baby in his arms out of reflex. The townspeople had decided that the Doctor had to go to the forest with the vulnerable ones. They'd said he was there to protect them, but he was no fool. He knew it was because he was a cripple. Nevertheless, he knew they were also deeply afraid of losing him, and it was a heartwarming thought.

"Her parents are dead," stated Barnable sadly, "I think you could take her."

Barnable hadn't said a word about his responsibility in the war, hadn't suggested he had to take care of her because her parents had died fighting against the Daleks, and that was what moved the Doctor the most. However, he understood now that these simple and insightful people, who only conceived happiness in a family structure, had been thinking all this time he and River didn't have children because they couldn't have them, but that they needed one. It probably hadn't occurred to them that it may have been a choice. He thought about going to River—who was confined to her bed—and showing her the little girl with a question, a mix of hope and fear in his eyes. He quickly chased the thought away.

"We can't," he replied. "I'm sorry, we just can't."

"Why?" asked Barnable, "She'll be safe with you, safer than anyone in this town I'd say, and I'm sure you will be wonderful!"

"Barnable," he voiced firmly, "We'll outlive her. That's a no. Please don't ask again."

 

He hadn't been able to hide his worry when the time had come for him to lead the others into the forest. He hadn't known what to say to his wife. Instead, he'd kissed her, hugged her to him, and thought he would never be able to let go of her. He knew she didn't die there, but he also knew time could be rewritten.

Now he watched silently as a priest was healing her. The confessional priests weren't originally trained warriors, but as the centuries passed they'd learnt how to fight. They'd learnt to bring together their electrical power to make it more deadly. They'd also acquired nursing and medical skills.

He'd taken River's hand, and it surprised him to see her so calm in the presence of such a creature, but he assumed she knew Tasha's weren't those who had colonized Earth and brainwashed her under Kovarian's command. Still, he knew seeing one of those slender, skeleton-like men in black suits would bring well-buried and purposely forgotten bad memories back to her. It was something to see such a lanky creature being so graceful and delicate when dedicated to such a sticky task. River had a very bad wound on her side, two cracked ribs and an uncountable number of bruises and burn marks. It broke him to know that he didn't have enough regeneration energy in him to help her, and it killed him even more to know that she had less. 

The priest used a local anesthetic to numb her skin. Then, he cleaned and stitched the wound. Everything was done with care and gentleness, but during all the time it took, River's eyes never left her husband's. She refused to look at the strange face above her, and at the disproportionate, cold and rumpled—yet gifted with agile fingers—hands of the priest on her.

"You should have a sponge bath, then use a healing cream and protect the wound with bandages. I'll bring you everything you need," said the priest in his deep and wheezing voice.

"Thank you," whispered River, and with the slightest of nods, he was off.

 

They dreamt together.

They were able to form a psychic bond even sleep couldn't undo. These dreams were conscious, self-induced, chosen and under control. They dreamt about the time they had, the places they'd been to and the people they'd loved. They dreamt about what had been and what hadn't. They relived their own past and they dreamt new adventures to make more good memories. He dreamt about his previous companions, Clara, Amy and Rory, and those who went with him before, Donna, Rose, Sarah Jane Smith, the Brigadier and many others. He saw Gallifrey again, its sky and his young age. Sometimes, he even dreamt the Master returned through the crack.  
She dreamt about her friends, her colleagues and the many people they'd met. She mostly dreamt of her parents, and in her dreams they were together as a proper family, and truly had a parent-daughter relationship.

Trenzalore may have tamed the wanderlust in them, but they still dreamt of all of time and space.

Next stop, everywhere.

They were inhabiting the TARDIS and their bedroom in the belly of the ship again. They were unwilling to leave the old girl alone, and now that they were together, they trusted each other to keep the other from flying away. They couldn't fail the townspeople, and they were too afraid of losing each other to wander anyway.

They knew such deep, long-lasting and self-induced dream states, maintained by a psychic bond, were deeply dangerous. They risked losing themselves in dreams or in one another's consciousness and never wake up. 

Sometimes, that was what they hoped would happen.

The TARDIS was again a place full of life, voices and laughter during the day because they'd allowed the townspeople, especially the children, to come in and enjoy the place and all its secrets and treasures. The last battle was years away now, and Christmas had been peaceful ever since. The people of Christmas refused their help for their everyday farming work, but the children kept asking the Doctor to fix and make toys, and the adults came to him for advice, as he was known to be the eldest and the wisest in town. River helped improve the technology on Trenzalore, and helped them develop their handcraft market. She taught the children about the big universe around them, but they began asking for trips aboard the TARDIS and she stopped.

Slowly, they began spending less and less time with the townspeople.

They were retiring on this little and unimportant planet they called home.

 

They started dreaming too much.

Barnable's grandson found them once, entangled in their bed in some deep place of the TARDIS he'd never been in before. He'd been looking for them for an entire week before he found them, and he wondered if Time Lords hibernated before they died. He'd come to tell them his grandfather was dead.

They still dreamt too much. It was a way of passing time.

Sometimes, he dreamt he was some of his previous selves, mostly the tenth one because it was the one of which his memories were the most vivid. It always felt a bit off. The eleventh Doctor in a tenth Doctor suit, acting and pretending to be who he looked to be. In fact, he always ended up with a strange mix of both incarnations, made of who he was currently and who he remembered he'd been.  
Sometimes, River herself looked like Mels, and she was also a strange mix of the woman he loved and the young woman he'd barely known. She was his River because he could still see the love she had for him shining in her brown eyes, and because she was still mad, brave, clever, and every wonderful thing River was and Mels had already been before her. She was Mels because her laughter was different, and because there was a shyness in her she hid behind jokes and sarcasm. River did have a vulnerable side too, but she hid it better, and Mels was sharper and rawer than River. She was Mels because of a lot of little details he slowly learnt to know and love about this previous version of his wife. He was astonished when in dreams Mels let him undress her, the woman who had once pointed a gun at him, but was also his loving wife. Her dark braids glided in his hands like water, black skin pressed against white, and he thought they made the most beautiful picture.

One day he met Melody, except she was a grown-up and looked in her middle twenties. He knew who she was. She was who Melody could have grown up to be, had she had a chance to. This was River trying to remember herself and to find a first self she had blurry memories of. This was River trying to make more of Melody than just a failed, thrown away first draft for the woman she was now. This Melody was a fully grown-up woman, and he could see in the way she looked at him that she was truly the woman who'd married him. Still, it felt forbidden to push her hair aside to place a kiss to the base of her neck. He did it anyway because loving her was wonderful. She looked a lot like Amy, but her red hair was darker, and her ageless eyes were definitely Rory's. She was even more beautiful than her mother, but the Doctor thought he was biased. He held her hands, he told her stories, he ran with her, and he kissed her cheeks and her forehead, but it took him a while to want her naked before him and spread out on a bed.

There were other dreams, dreams they couldn't control. They usually ended up being nightmares. This was what happened when they let their control slip away and they allowed themselves to get some proper rest. Their psychic bond unravelled itself, and they couldn't reach each other for comfort. These were the times when they were truly alone with themselves and prey to their demons.

River dreamt of the day her mother shot her in a dark warehouse. She dreamt of the time Amy came to the orphanage, didn't know yet who Melody was and was too afraid and powerless to help her. She saw her mother being captured again before her. She remembered recognizing Amy as her mother from the only picture she'd had, and wondering about the tally marks on her face. She remembered contemplating the picture of herself and Amy for hours, wondering if she was truly this beautiful, why she'd abandoned her to fly off with the Doctor, and yet thinking she looked so happy to be a mother. She'd finally found some answers, the day Amy came to the orphanage. Her mother was truly beautiful, and she hadn't abandoned her. The Silence had taken her away, and kept her apart from her. She dreamt of the exact moment her heart had broken when she'd understood her mother didn't have a clue of who she was, wasn't there to get her, and that they—whoever they were—were coming. She dreamt of herself as River, kneeling before little Melody and telling her everything was going to be alright, telling her who she was, telling her she was strong enough to free herself from the spacesuit, and that she'd have to run. She'd forgotten this and remembered it a long time afterwards, when she was River herself and reliving the scene as Melody at the same time.

River told the Doctor every nightmare she had, and he was always there to plant a kiss on the backs of her shaky hands and to hold her to him. She thought they were linear enough to tell each other everything, and she didn't understand when she still found closed doors in his mind, but she always respected his silence. He had nightmares about the bad things he'd done, and the people he'd lost. He had nightmares about the day he'd have to tell her to go.

 

The sex was slower now, less frequent. They were less easily aroused, and it took them more time to get all wound up and ready for each other. His body failed him sometimes, and he felt vulnerable and damaged. He felt less virile in a very manly, human way, and he felt ridiculous for that. For a Time Lord, he thought he could be terribly vain, but he knew the truth. It hurt because his body was letting him down, and because even though he knew sex wasn't about performing, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to please her.

In these times, they invented a new way to dance around each other. Somehow, what they'd been used to calling the foreplay mostly became the play itself, and it wasn't something less pleasant in the slightest. They'd always been imaginative when it came to renewing the passion. New tricks were learnt to make the other shiver in delight, and at the same time the familiarity of each other's skin was treasured.  
When they made love in dreams it was sometimes a bit rough in compensation, and always passionate and life-affirming. In the real world it was all made of slow caresses, a lot of patience and tenderness to work the other up, and of words to tell how beautiful and attractive the other still was despite their ages. They took their time, teasing, reassuring, loving and slowly getting each other to the picture of perfect wantonness. Theirs bodies weren't conventionally attractive ones anymore, but they did have a sort of beauty. The skin was old and lined, but smooth, inviting, welcoming, and their minds wrapped around each other like well-worn cotton. He loved to see her old because it reminded him of how they'd aged together. It meant she was there with him, and the idea of seeing her young again scared him because it would mean her end.

 

She aged faster than him.

It wasn't something visible in her appearance. They both looked old as the hills, wrinkled skins matching thin and winter white hair. It was tangible in the way she moved, in the way she breathed and in the way her hearts beat like a murmur in her ribcage. Their melody was slowing down, and it was killing her.

"It's her hearts," the Doctor said one day to Tasha. "She's going to die like a candle being blown out. I have to send her away, she can't die here."

She aged faster because she didn't have any regeneration energy left in her, and she wasn't a full Time Lady. He'd tried to give her some of his own energy, but he had so little himself that his body had refused to cooperate. 

River had said it didn't matter because it would only have been postponing a little what had to happen, and she didn't want him to short his life to extend hers.

"I wanted us to die together," he said softly, and she didn't find any answer.

He knew he had to send her away. He knew that soon he would start to feel time shifting, and he knew he had a promise to keep. "Not one line," River had said. Still, he couldn't resolve himself to let her go.

"Promise me you won't be too sad, when I..." she whispered one night in the dark of their room, and swallowed hard to continue. "When I'm dead."

He knew death didn't frighten her, but he knew how hard it was to let go when you had once thought you had all eternity.

"You won't die here, River," he said abruptly, and cursed himself, but it was better off this way. He had to tell her.

"What do you mean?"

"Your grave. It's a false grave and a secret entrance to my tomb. I don't know who made it that way. The townspeople or the Church, probably."

A look of total horror crossed her face, and he reached out to take her hands and stroke their backs. She struggled a bit against his touch, but he held as tight as his old hand allowed him to.

"Yes, I lied to you, I know," he admitted. "But it was for the best, you have to believe me! River, please," he pleaded.

She eventually calmed down and he inched closer to take her in his arms and seek courage in playing with her hair.

"Sweetie, look at me and tell me what's going to happen to me," she demanded, slightly pushing him away.

He pulled away on his own to look her in the eye, and his hands left her hair for her shoulder blades, absently tracing Gallifreyan on them, words of love and apology.

"I remember those eyes," he said fondly, "old, wise and beautiful." He took her hands and kissed each of her fingers, one by one. "I remember this nail polish, and those rings. That one Amy's," he pointed out, "and I gave you this one after our second wedding. I remembered your hair," he continued, "longer than belief, so white and so soft."

"I have to go back to a younger you," she breathed out.

"Yes," he agreed. "I saw you at your home, just a few days after you left it to come here. I'm sorry, but it's really important you meet me."

"Okay," she nodded, "I'll be back in a second."

"No. I'm sorry, but no. You can't come back. You don't die here, and you can't ask me any questions. I'm sorry," he contradicted her in a broken voice and she shuddered when he took her once more in his arms to hide his  
face in her hair. She sobbed violently, he stroked her hair, her hands clenched at his back and this seemed to last forever.

"I'm so old," she spoke weakly a moment later. "What is younger you going to think of me?"

"I thought you were beautiful."


	11. Twelve

River was gone.

He'd left the TARDIS, too afraid he'd eventually bury himself alive in the depths of his ship, and returned to the room he had in the bell tower. The crack had remained silent, but it was still open and exuding light. He wondered if this meant the Time Lords were still hoping, if they still trusted him to find a solution and help them. They didn't know he wasn't even trying. His brain was old and that kind of question was difficult to deal with because his train of thought was slower now, and his memory failed him often enough. Everything ended, mind and body were strongly linked, and both were decaying at their own pace, slowly letting him down.

He clung to little everyday things, fixing old toys and making new ones, drinking tea with Tasha or going out for a short walk with the Christmas baker. The townspeople kept their respectful, affectionate distance with him. He was so old now, River was gone, and he was just an ancient widower only left with old memories he was often rambling about. Tasha hadn't aged, nonetheless time was killing her as well. She was the one who anchored him in this quaint little town, who had always been there to remind him why he was himself. Neither to help the Time Lords, nor to fight—he was so weak now—but because his simple presence, and the idea that his name could unleash his people, was the best threat they had. 

River had been gone for almost a century when the Daleks launched a new attack. He was going to die, but he knew they were still too afraid of him to try to kill him. He was dying of old age anyway, what an irony. Tasha was by his side, but she wasn't the one he needed. He needed River, but he knew it would be reckless to bring her there. Tasha brought him Clara instead, his sweet and long-lost Clara. She came with a Christmas cracker. He thought it had in her perspective been barely a few minutes, hours maybe, since they'd last seen each other.

 

He phoned a future Clara from Trenzalore and he begged for the TARDIS to call her at the right moment. He was afraid of regenerating again. This was at the same time a relief—he wouldn't die without having a chance to seek and find Gallifrey again—and terrifying because he was so old, so tired at this moment that he couldn't imagine how he'd deal with living again for hundreds, thousands of years maybe. He phoned Clara to tell her that future him needed her, and he phoned River straight after that to tell her he was afraid, and that he was coming back to her, to tell her he'd survived. He phoned River because she was the only one who could understand the terror of regenerating, his life escaping him in a breath, and an entire new one filling him in a haze of pure pain at the same time. She told him everything was going to be alright, but he knew she truly didn't know what to say to the dying man and the almost immortal Time Lord he was.

It didn't matter. He just wanted to hear her voice before he went.

 

He came to River after his adventure in Victorian London with Clara and the Paternoster Gang.

He'd had a shower, and he'd swapped the tramp's old coat for a black suit and a white shirt. He'd been aiming for strict minimalism, but the jacket he found was red on the other side, and it reminded him of his third self. He wasn't sure about it, but he liked it anyway. The thing was, he didn't really know who he was yet. He landed just in time to see the younger Doctor's TARDIS leave. He left his own parked outside her house, too afraid he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of taking her away for more adventures with him. He felt rational and resigned, yet he couldn't trust himself to bring her back to her fate. She had so many times left the TARDIS before he woke up to spare him goodbyes she knew he hated. 

Now, he felt like he might find the strength to be the one to go, even if this meant farewell.

Her house was just as he remembered it, tiny, nice and welcoming, but a bit impersonal. It seemed like she'd never truly settled down in there, and in a way she hadn't. She loved travelling too much to belong to one place and to slow down her life with the weight of accumulated belongings. Trenzalore had been an exception, but things were different then, and their house in Christmas was the TARDIS, a living, sentient and travelling home that could go anywhere in time and space. 

He found her in her bed, asleep and curled up in a foetal position. He could tell she had been crying, but for now she looked so frail and peaceful that he could do nothing but watch her in silent awe. He reached out and gently woke her up by stroking her hair, spread out on her pillow. She stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes lazily. She flinched and blinked several times. 

"Doctor?" she asked in a ragged breath.

"Who else?" he replied and smiled, a bright, wide smile that did nothing to hide how insecure he was.

She tried to sit and winced because her whole body felt rusted and about to shatter into pieces.

He quickly pulled a chair—the chair his younger self had spent the previous night on—and sat in front of her, steadying her with his hands on her arms. This body didn't like contact much, but with her it seemed to be okay.

"They gave you another go," she spoke softly. "God, I've hoped so much."

His hands left her arms to cradle her face, and he looked directly in her clear green eyes. Her beauty had withered as time had passed, but her eyes were still gleaming with cleverness and energy, and her hair was still beautiful and soft. He resisted the urge to touch it again, he couldn't let himself be sidetracked.

"What do you think?" he dared to ask.

Her frail hands came to his face too, mirroring his gesture as she studied him intently. She lifted a hand to stroke his short grey hair—a slow and steady caress, despite how shaky her hands tended to be—then continued her journey down to his forehead, mapping the lines on it. She followed the bridge of his nose and ended up tracing his mouth. He pressed a light, almost unnoticeable kiss to her finger and she smiled.

"You're beautiful," she replied. "And you've even got a Scottish accent. Mum would have liked it!"

He chuckled lightly at that and let his hands tangle themselves in her hair. _Bloody temptation, these curls,_ he thought faintly.

"You're not bad yourself," he teased.

"I'm old, Doctor, and about to die," she stated and when her green eyes looked into his blue ones he read in them a lot of things, the joy of seeing him again, but also fear and sorrow.

"I can fix that," he offered with a tentative smile. He hated himself as those words left his mouth, because he knew he couldn't offer her new lives. Her current self would die without any chance of regenerating anyway.

"I won't give you new lives," he added softly. It startled him that he'd automatically said "won't" instead of "can't". Maybe he just wanted her to figure out for herself what was going to happen to her, and the coward he was.

"I'm going to die," River repeated, "but it's not going to happen because of old age. I'll die in battle, in an adventure among many others. I don't know how it happened and I don't know when, but I presume it happened before Trenzalore for you," she said, and her tone was calm and cold until her voice faltered a bit at the end.

"How do you know?" he breathed out in a shocked gasp. He didn't have the strength or the cowardice to lie to her anymore, still it hurt deeply to have this discussion with her, alive and resigned to her fate.

"My false grave," she answered in a whisper, and she looked almost ashamed and revolted by her own cleverness. "You said I wouldn't have died on Trenzalore. I assume this means you know where and when I die. You were there to witness it, or someone told you it happened," she explained, and he was frozen in shock by the surrealism of the moment and his own stupidity. "I thought this was insane," River resumed, "that you were only telling me that to make me leave Trenzalore. I thought you hoped the Time Lords would help you, and you just wanted me to be safe until you joined me again. And here you are," she said with a soft smile and a caress of her thumb on his cheek.

He waited for her to carry on, because he knew she wasn't done.

"But it all makes sense now, Sweetie," she did continue, "how you clung to me, how afraid you were that I'd go, and how you treat me like a miracle," she spoke gently, "your miracle."

"Yes," he admitted in a barely audible whisper. "I'm a widower, River. I've been for a long time. And I tried to grieve you, I tried to let you go, but I kept meeting you, and you were alive and wonderful—my River, my wife." He'd spoken the last words fondly, but his voice broke when he carried on. "And God, I loved you. I _love_ you. I couldn't treat you like a ghost or tell you what had happened. I'm sorry."

"Those closed doors in your mind, that's what they hide."

"Yes."

"You told me loving you was going to hurt. It was on my first night with you, do you remember?" she asked and he nodded slightly, of course he remembered his warning. "I chose to love you anyway. And it was worth it," she said. "Believe me, it was worth it."

 

They shouldn't be looking.

Energy sharing was sacred among Time Lords, and it was forbidden to look at the show it was making. They didn't care, because this was beautiful. The energy was dancing rather than exploding, and it was something far less violent and chaotic than a regeneration. They presumed it was the same the day she brought him back to life, but both of them had closed their eyes that time. Amy and Rory had surely looked at it in awe. They were both panting and clinging to each other. This wasn't exactly painful, but still unpleasant. The Doctor felt dizzy and like his blood was being slowly drained out, and River felt every inch of her slightly aching. During all the time it took, her eyes never left the strips of energy dancing around them, ribbons of bright yellow and orange light. He looked at her, watching how the strips wound themselves around her curls, her wrists, her waist and her ankles. He watched as the light faded slowly into her, and he patiently combed out her hair as it got back its color. He hugged her tighter when he felt her growing stronger, and he kissed her forehead as he saw its lines fading away. 

She closed her eyes when his lips finally met hers, but the kiss was chaste and he quickly pulled back.

"I'm sorry."

 

She kissed along his jaw and slowly went down. Her lips lingered just above his Adam's apple, just enough time to be sure she'd well heard his moan. She smiled against the skin she was teasing, and his hands twitched in her hair, sign of an arousal he'd failed to deny.

"I know you want it," she purred. "Let go for me, Sweetie. I'll be there to catch you. I've always been."

"You won't always be," he let it slip out and shocked himself. "River, I can't do this," he said. "I'm sorry, but you're revolving around my eleventh self. Meeting me and the tenth one is just..." He sighed deeply, "you're overflowing River, that's all."

"But I'm here, right here and right now, and alive. You can't treat a living woman like a ghost, you said it yourself."

"It could be the last time."

"Then do it like it's the last time. You've already felt this way, I'm sure. On my first night with you, you were so afraid, so eager to make it last forever and so sad when it was over. Do you know my fear of our relationship being back to front came from there?"

"No, I didn't."

"I want you to love me like it's the first and the last time. The only time. I want to be the first for this body," she said almost shyly, and hid her face in the hollow of his neck. His arms came around her and he pressed a kiss into her hair.

"You might be disappointed, I'm a bit out of practice," he finally sighed.

"I won't."

 

She flushed when he undressed her.

"Nothing I haven't seen before, and nothing to be ashamed of. You're beautiful."

"Not this face," she whispered and avoided his gaze.

His mind full of images of his wife surrendering to his caresses, he leaned in to kiss her fiercely, but kissing her in this new body was different. Her hands wandered across his torso, seeking the warmth of his skin under the layers of clothes. Her voice became a murmur to curse the tricky buttons of his shirt, and he did his best to forget it was his first time in this incarnation. He reacted in quite the same way to her touch because no matter the flesh, what mattered was that this was her touching him, and it reminded him of her doing exactly the same things to his eleventh self. She'd undone his belt and trouser buttons, and she slid her hand inside his pants with ease. She stopped his startled protest—this was going too fast—with a hungry kiss and he relaxed into her touch. Her lips quickly left his to wander along his jaw, to suck at the sensitive skin of his throat, and to discover his collarbones. She tasted him delicately, reverently with the tip of her tongue, and all of it went with long and merciless strokes. He moaned deeply, and his hands twitched in her hair, a contraction made of waiting, fear and want. She claimed his lips again when he came, muffling his cry with her mouth.

She let him calm down, slowly resuming her meticulous cartography of his torso. They didn't say a word, and after a moment he gently flipped them over and laid her down on her back.

"Two legs again," he said suddenly when he realized he hadn't been the one on top for centuries, and they laughed together at that.

It had been too long for him, and they were both too eager to take their time. She tensed when his hands explored her, willing herself to give in to these unknown and tentative, yet experienced fingers inside her. She focused on his face, but even his blue eyes were those of a stranger.

"What's wrong?"

He was worried by the discomfort he saw on her face.

"Nothing, Sweetie. It's just," she took a deep breath and he withdrew his fingers carefully, "I've only done this with your past self. I do know it's you," she sighed, "but it's still strange."

"I'll show you, then," he promised and placed his fingers on her temples.

The mind was strongly linked to the body, so his wasn't exactly the same anymore, but something was definitively familiar and uniquely him. Something one may have wanted to call the soul. It was the part of him that never died and always remembered who he'd been and who he'd loved—her husband. Her thoughts tumbled across his mind in a chaotic clamor, disconnected words of apology and recognition. He soothed her with his hands skimming over her, her stomach, her breasts, and her legs as they delved more deeply into their psychic bond. He slid inside her in one smooth thrust when he felt her ready. And he was him, hovering over her and moving between her thighs, and at the same time he was her, on her back, legs spread and welcoming him. They'd almost forgotten how intense and overwhelming physical and mental intimacy could be when combined.

 

"Shall we do it again?" he teased her once their breathing had evened out.

"Again," she laughed, a throaty and happy sound that made him feel like the luckiest man in the universe, and he kissed her belly in a way he knew would let him hear that sound again.

 

"I've got to go," he said hours later as they lay naked in her bed, all sweaty and fulfilled.

"Yes. I told younger you he could come back this evening, and it's already getting dark."

"And we don't want your husband to find you in bed with another man, do we?"

"You're my husband, and I bet you won't be there until midnight. This you was always late."

He chuckled softly at that, but his tone was solemn when he spoke again.

"I'll wait until you're asleep."

"Sweetie?" she asked, already drifting off from exhaustion.

"Yes?"

"Promise me you'll love again, after me," she sighed and he pulled her closer, wrapping both of them securely in the blankets.

"I will," he told her, "I've got Clara, but I feel like I won't be able to fall in love the way I did with you again. I don't want to."

"It might take a while, but you will. What are you so afraid of?"

"It hurts."

"Wasn't it worth it?"

"It was. That, I can promise you. It was."

 

He'd thought saying goodbye to River would be harrowing, but the moment was quiet. She'd fallen asleep in his arms, and he allowed himself to hold her just a little longer, just a little tighter. When he heard his younger self's TARDIS materialising in the distance, he carefully disentangled himself from their embrace. He pressed one last kiss into her hair before he went, and he lingered just a few seconds more than necessary, simply breathing her in, acknowledging the incredible reality of her. He pulled back regretfully and left her a letter, telling her she had to find his younger self, grieving on his cloud in Victorian London. He gave her the coordinates.

Their story was coming full circle.

She wasn't his anymore, and from now on, he was her widower.


	12. Farewell

"Rest now, my warrior." 

He spared a last glance at his eleventh self as the latter left the room, and let the pang of jealousy rush quietly through him. He'd felt so lost back then, but now he knew what was coming for that man, while his own prospects were blurry and frightening. Envying his previous self was easy, but he wouldn't be caught lamenting on himself. A sigh, and his weary eyes came back to River's lifeless body. 

He scooped her up in his arms, her head lolled back and he held it up against his chest. Her skin smelled like death to his sharp senses. He inhaled deeply, willing himself to be reminded of what she was. A corpse that would soon be cold and rigid in his arms, nothing to be attached to. The Doctor couldn't keep himself from caring, though. This was a body she'd inhabited, one she’d fought, run and loved with. In a way it was her, even if her mind was currently in the Library data core. He closed his eyes, summoned into mind the woman she'd been: the warmth of her skin against his colder one, the sound of her voice, her wicked smile and the soft murmur of her mind in his own were the first things that came back to him. He fought back a sob because the present time didn't stand the comparison. She was a hollow frame, an empty shrine that had once contained her beautiful soul. A nervous laugh almost escaped him at his own thoughts, he didn't even believe in such Manichean things as immortal souls opposed to mortal bodies. Minds, thoughts and feelings were the result of chemical impulses. None of them could exist without a living body or a computer to mimic the activity of the brain and maintain them. 

Maybe it was time to get her out of the artificial heaven he'd thrown her in. He'd spent centuries avoiding the subject, running after living versions of his wife, but he knew it was possible. Those four thousand and twenty-two people River had saved hadn't had a body for over a century. They had come back looking the same as the day they had disappeared. They hadn't aged in those decades spent as data ghosts. They had been virtually dead, with no proper bodies waiting for them in the real world. Which didn't only mean the Library stocked informations linked to the bodies quite the way a teleporter would, but it also meant it could bring people back to life.

However, he was scared of trying to save her. Afraid it wouldn't work and afraid of River's judgement. Archiving people inside data slices wasn't something unusual for Time Lords, but it certainly was for humans. After all, River had always wanted him to accept she wasn't meant to be immortal, even though she was fond of his fierce need to keep her with him forever. Letting her die was in a way acknowledging her humanity, it was accepting that death was a part of life and not something to fight against. In a way it was accepting she wasn't like him, an idiot cursed with an immortality he didn't even think he deserved. She wasn't the Master either, stealing bodies to crawl his way to a few more centuries and resurrecting himself in the silliest fashions.

There was the mourning, all the grief and all the pain they had been through, and in a way he hated the idea that it would be redeem nonsensical if things could be fixed so easily. He was freshly regenerated, and existential questions had already started to haunt him. His twelfth self seemed heartless, even to him sometimes, though he didn't know the man he had become very well yet. Strong and resigned, and the one who would be able to let her go. No more struggles against time itself for a mere few seconds or days with her. He just wanted her to rest in peace and become a story in his head, like many others had before her. Fond memories instead of a harrowing grief, but he knew he would have to live through the proper mourning to get to that point.

"We had a good time, didn't we River?" he spoke quietly. "More time than humans get, more than we had a right to claim," he stated quietly. "God," he let out in a strangled sob, and it was silly because he didn't even believe in any sort of gods. This was a bad habit he'd picked up from humans; the need of something bigger and stronger than him to curse or rely upon. "I want you back."

These days he often wondered if he was a good or a bad man, but for now he could allow himself to be just a man in pain. A widower, only seen by his late wife. He nuzzled his face into her hair, and wiped his tears away in her curls.

"Doctor?" asked a tentative voice. He hadn't heard footsteps approaching.

"Yes?" he answered hoarsely. His grip tightened around River, as if he feared she would be taken away from him, but to his surprise the intruder was Doctor Oswald. She had recognised him. River had probably left her the book with all his faces, and she'd insisted to take a picture of his twelfth self the only time they'd met.

"I was hoping to find you here," Clara said, waving River's psychic paper at him briefly. "I told them I was your assistant. I've met your eleventh self a few days ago, we talked about River's funeral and since then I was wondering if you might have come here after all. I used River's vortex manipulator, and here I am," she explained as she came closer. "I thought you might need help," she spoke gently, "but I'll leave if you want me to."

"Doctor Oswald," he acknowledged her, startled and voice still thick with tears. She didn't say a word, but she put a soothing hand on one of his arms and he froze at the mere contact. Still, she wasn't a stranger any more. She was Clara, not his companion, but still someone he loved and trusted.

"I've lit a funeral pyre for one of my kind, years ago. A friend," he confessed to her. "I owe the same to River."

Clara nodded. She didn't say she thought the Time Lords were extinguished, and didn't question him about the friend he had mentioned. She was tactful, even more than his Clara. 

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"My TARDIS is cloaked in the room. Just snap your fingers, she will open her doors."

 

 

"Your journey is over now, let it all go. The pain, the hard work, the fear, let it all go. Let me lure you to your forever-lasting sleep, let our love soothe you. Your time has been taken away, your soul is being taken away now, and fire will take your body away. Just rest. You don't belong to this world anymore, but you're not alone, not unloved. Just rest, my child."

Tasha's voice was steady as she spoke those words in the dark of Trenzalore's endless night. The Doctor wasn't religious, but her speech made sense to him. He thought he should tell her River's soul wasn't meant to rest in peace, and that it was all his fault because he had trapped her. However, Tasha Lem knew eternity was a curse. She would tell him he'd been wrong, and she would be right to do so. Mocking believers and their way of thinking about an afterlife was easy, but he wasn't better than them, barely able to accept death when it came to the people he loved the most.

They lit the pyre together, Tasha, Clara and him. They watched as the flames rose high in the dark and empty sky. No threatening spaceships were to be seen anymore.

They waited for the fire to die, silent and frozen in the snow.

 

 

"You look like death," he told Tasha and she shrugged, a mysterious smile floating on her lips. She wasn't wearing anything sumptuous anymore, she was dressed like most people in Christmas. Anyway, she had only accepted the luxury of the Church because it was expected of her. The bishops had dismissed her because without his fortunate regeneration, Trenzalore would have burnt. Since then she'd lived with the townspeople, and he wanted to believe she had found peace among them.

"Well, I'm dying," she just said. "After all my job is over. I don't see why I should keep on living."

"To live your own life?" he suggested, very softly, like he was proposing something mad and reckless. 

"What life?" she laughed. "I've never built one outside the Church. The people here are nice enough, but the role I've played in the war does put some distance between us, you know. And I've got a living Dalek inside me. I'm tired of fighting it," she added sharply.

"So you're sabotaging your own body for fear that the Dalek would take control over you?" he pointed out, cursing himself for making it sound like it was in any way easy for her.

"Don't make it sound like I had no choice," she shot back.

"Tasha," he pleaded. They had gone through so much together. He didn't want to lose her too.

"You don't understand," she sighed. "It's all right. You're a Time Lord, you're practically born for eternity. Humans aren't. Everything must end, Doctor. And you were right, Trenzalore isn't a bad place to die."

 

 

"How's Clara?" Doctor Oswald asked when he gave her a lift back home.

"A bit unsettled by my recent regeneration," he managed to stutter.

She grinned, clearly delighted, and suddenly there was no use pretending he didn't know what she was talking about. "A bit strange isn't it, for someone who met every one of your incarnations by jumping into your time stream?"

"You knew!" he finally choked out. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because the time wasn't appropriate. You came to talk about River, and then you gave me that photo and started asking about my sister. I know what I am, and I know what my sister and I have been created for, but I couldn't add more to your guilt," she explained, very calm.

"Why are you telling me now, then?" he blurted out.

"I've changed my mind. I wanted you to know, maybe to prove you I'm not a poor little thing you need to protect from yourself. River knew too, we figured it out together, and now I know it was her I was meant to save."

He sighed, tried to find clever words to answer her. Then gave up.

"I'm sorry."

"I also needed you to know I don't blame you, nor your Clara."

They fell silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her tone was lighter, almost amused.

"Well, don't you want to know how we figured it out?"

"How?" he inquired, playing along.

"People leave traces behind them, especially time travellers messing up with big historical events. We're archaeologists, our job is to collect them, analyze them, make sense out of them," she began. "For instance, in 2049, Clara Oswald recorded a message which was heard by the whole of humanity, although it didn't impact on the events at hand." She trailed off as though telling a story, careful to be vague enough not to give away spoilers."Ringing any bells?" she asked and he answered by the negative. "Her speech is now a case study for students of history, politics and philosophy," she carried on. "It took us years to piece it all together, and that was the big mystery that brought us in such a close relationship, River and I, but by the time I understood we were in danger my sister was already gone."

"You know everything then," he murmured, and it made sense. Artie and Angie Maitland had found compromising photographs of their nanny in their school's history books; in the Victorian era and aboard a Russian submarine during the Cold War. No wonder a trained archaeologist had solved the puzzle.

"It must have been quite terrifying for you, finding all those versions of yourself scattered across history."

"They're not me," she retorted, "but yes, it was." She stayed silent for a moment, quickly cheering up at his concerned look. "Anyway, Clara Oswald isn't the worst person to be based upon. And I'm not strictly her. I checked, compared everything. I inherited her face, her name, most of her personality, but I had a different life, I made different choices, met different people, did different things. I'm not a copy."

"Of course you're not," he agreed gently. "You're magnificent, Doctor Oswald," he added, and he got the feeling that this current body wasn't one to deliver such compliments very often.

"Thank you," she answered and in an instant she was hugging him, and he didn't bother to justify his arms dangling awkwardly at his sides.

"There are still two mysteries," she teased when she released him, and continued at his curious gaze. "What happened to your grave on Trenzalore, since you clearly have survived?"

He started a sentence, wanting to tell her he didn't know any more than she did, but she quickly cut him off. "No, don't say anything, I want to solve it by myself."

"I don't know anything."

"All the better. The second one, who gave Clara your number?"

"Well, Doctor Oswald, I have a newspaper and a story that you might like. It takes place in Victorian London, and there's a dinosaur," he started.

 

 

He ran with Clara. Somehow, River stopped being a difficult subject, and he even found himself casually mentioning her to Clara, finding out that time had turned his exile among otters into a sweet memory. Still, there were times when she kept haunting him. Times when he tortured himself over the reason why he had saved her into that data core, if it wasn't to get her out of it later. Times when he wondered why he despised Danny Pink as a soldier while the same status dignified River to him, while he even had a kink for her guns. Sleepless nights when he put together plans to bring her back.

Plans he wasn't bold enough to try.

After all, bringing back the dead sounded like the power of a god. A power nobody could have.

 

 

One day he took Clara and Courtney to the moon, and his impossible girl left him. She was hurt and angry, and he didn't understand.

That was when he started paying visits to River. It was a temptation that had haunted and scared him since Clara had met River in a dream. After all, meeting up in dreams wasn't an unusual thing for him and his wife.

The first time he came for help, but then Clara came back. They went on a journey aboard the Orient Express, he saved the day and everything seemed to return to normality between him and his companion.

He kept visiting River.

 

 

One day his wife cried in his arms because she couldn't keep up appearances anymore.

"You're not real," she sobbed.

He felt his hearts sinking down in his chest at her words, and raised a shaky hand to caress her hair.

"What do you mean, love? Of course I'm real."

"You're everything my husband was," she explained in a brittle voice, "but he wouldn't waste his time here. He said goodbye."

"River," he sighed. He didn't know what to do, but the realization slowly dawned on him that they had never taken the time to properly talk about what it was like for her, living inside the Library data core. "Tell me what makes you think that."

And she talked, talked and talked for hours. She told him how it was becoming more and more difficult to remember her life before her death. She told him about a film she had watched with her parents when she was Mels, about a virtual world created by machines to fool humans and use them against their will.

"And the heroes all wanted to know the truth, to live in the real world, no matter how much it hurt. The one who wanted to live in oblivion was depicted as a coward. Humans don't like lies, you know," she said.

She told him she didn't know how much time had passed since she had been uploaded inside the matrix. 

She had been used to knowing how time worked.

She also told him she didn't have much control over her life.

"Every adult inside the Library has children, a brother and a sister. The same girl and the same boy for everyone, and they disappear whenever you stop seeing them or thinking about them. I'm an exception, I've got three children because Charlotte has adopted me as her mother. She has chosen to forget she's not alive."

That was how Doctor Moon thought he would make them happy, in a hell paved with good intentions.

"It's an artificial intelligence, it just doesn't understand people."

Doctor Moon had tried to pair them together because it believed people needed to be a couple to be happy. The girls with the boys, or Anita with Evangelista and the two Daves together, whichever would work.

"It just sensed I needed someone special. It just feels how we feel because we're part of it, it's the computer. One day a man with a bow tie showed up, all made out of my memories of the Doctor."

He drew soothing circles across her back, and tried to collect himself.

"You know this is different," he murmured in a foolish hope she would agree. "We meet outside the Library, we join in dreams. There's no Doctor Moon here. You know I'm real. Please," he begged, "just tell me you know who I am."

"I can't tell what is true and what is a fakery anymore," she admitted and he swallowed hard. "If you're really my husband, I beg you to forgive me because I'm so, so sorry my love. But I can't trust even my own judgement anymore."

"I love you," he tried.

"I know," she replied softly. "And I love you too. But anyone, anything would think of saying that."

A sob escaped him and she kissed him. He reciprocated hungrily, desperately, as if his kiss could convince her he really was her Doctor.

"I could get you out of here," he suggested.

"And even if you succeed I will think it's a trick. I will assume the Library has evolved into a better imitation of the real world, without those ellipses in time and those fake children. And nothing will be able to convince me otherwise."

"Then what can I do?" he asked, and he hated feeling so helpless. His grip tightened uselessly around her and she shuddered.

"If you were really him, you would do something for me. Something the computer wouldn't agree to do," River whispered. 

"Something the Doctor would do, even if it broke his hearts," he followed up. 

He already knew what she was asking for.

 

 

He couldn't bear River's suffering, but the internal workings of the Library were beyond his knowledge and his skills. 

"I've failed you," he told her regretfully, and she stroked his jaw. 

"Perhaps you didn't really want to succeed." 

This was a few days before the Master came back into his life as the Mistress, with her Nethersphere and her terrible power over the dead. 

 

 

He found his old friend again, after he was sure Clara was safe at home and waiting for Danny to figure out how Missy's bracelet worked and come back to his beloved. 

"What do you need?" the Mistress asked, and she was looking at him with the same look of sorrowful affection she'd given him in the graveyard.

That look that told him she would do anything for her friend. 

He must have looked at her with a look of pure distress because she lifted a hand to stroke his hair lightly, eyeing him with concern. Probably because she knew she wasn't the cause for his current state. 

"What do you need, Theta?" she voiced again. The use of his childhood nickname soothed him, lured him into trusting her. He vaguely noticed she had used "need", when he would have used "want" if things had been the other way around. "You didn't come here to kill me, did you?" 

He took her in his arms impulsively. It didn't matter that he normally didn't trust a hug. He didn't usually trust the Mistress either. 

Eventually, he found the courage to speak. 

_Remember, be strong. Even if it breaks your heart,_ he had told Clara. Time to follow his own advice. 

"I need your help to kill someone I love."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big 'THANK YOU' to everyone who has followed this fanfiction; read it, bookmarked it, subscribed to it, and most of all commented on it! I am so glad and grateful! 
> 
> And a major, massive 'THANK YOU' to Inkfire for her beta reading, her kindness, her ever so insightful feebacks and her wonderful reviews!
> 
> Wish you all the best!


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